Access Holdings, the parent company of Nigeria’s largest bank, Access Bank, says it will be going fully digital for its N365bn rights issue.
In a notice filed with the Nigerian Exchange Limited, the holding company said it was seeking to raise N365bn through a rights issue to fortify its capital base, support expansion, and its ability to seize emerging opportunities in the financial sector.
It is also seeking a combined capital raise of up to $1.5bn via equity, quasi-equity, and debt issuances.
Speaking with journalists at the second Annual General Meeting of the Holdco, the chairman, Aigboje Aig-Imoukhuede, disclosed that digital technology would play an interesting role in the bank’s capital-raising efforts.
He said, “If you remember the 2004 capital raising, we went around Nigeria. It led to the democratisation of our capital market, others followed suit. The number of shareholders of banks and the capital market increased as a result of that effort.
“This time around, we have digital technology that we are going to deploy fully. There have been public offers that have leveraged digital technology but using Access Bank’s capacity, the NGX’s digital capacity, we are going to do some interesting things.
“This rights issue, we have shareholders and each of them would be able to make that investment decision just by touching their phones. That way, the issue of dilution and concerns that they may have about participation would be dealt with.”
