Nigeria's Stanbic IBTC aims to carry out 20.4 bln naira rights issue this year

Nigeria's Stanbic IBTC aims to carry out a 20.4 billion naira ($102.6 million) rights issue this year and seek shareholders' vote to distribute a scrip dividend to boost its capital base, the lender said on Tuesday.
Chief Executive Sola David-Borha said she expected increased regulatory pressure to weigh on industry profits this year and that the bank had revised its 2015 loan growth down to 10 percent, the lower end of its guidance range.
Loans have grown 4 percent in the first six months of this year.
The mid-tier lender said its South African parent bank Standard Bank was supportive of the cash call and that a price for the share sale would be set after regulatory approvals had been received.
"If we are successful with the scrip dividend, assuming 50 percent of shareholders go for it ... together with the rights issues, we should be able to maintain adequate capital," Chief Financial Officer Arthur Oginga told an investors call.
The bank's capital adequacy ratio stood at 10 percent. Return on equity (ROE) fell to 14.2 percent for the first half, compared with 28.9 percent a year ago. It forecast ROE to reach 18 percent by year-end.
Nigerian lenders have been shoring up their balance sheets in preparation for the adoption of stricter international capital requirements, which would otherwise see capital ratios for most of them drop by between 100 and 400 basis points.
Rival lender United Bank for Africa last week said it had raised 11.5 billion naira ($57.8 million) by selling new stock to existing shareholders to bolster its capital base.
Shares in Stanbic IBTC fell 3.81 percent to 24.79 naira, underperforming the broad index, which ended down 0.81 percent, its tenth day of losses.
Stanbic last week said its first-half pretax profit fell 52 percent to 9.53 billion naira ($47.90 million) and cut its interim dividend.
The lender said central bank rules tightening access to dollars on the official interbank market impacted its foreign currency and fixed income trading business as well as a slowdown in foreign portfolio investors.