The delisting of the lender from the local bourse brought to a close chapter the operations of a bank founded by the renowned banker, Pascal Dozie, who also is the chairman of the board of the Nigerian unit of MTN telecommunications firm.
Again, the action was precipitated by the acquisition of Diamond Bank by its rival Access Bank after the former struggled to raise fresh capital to help strengthen its operations to no avail.
The Carlyle backed lender was one of Nigeria's promising second-generation financial institutions in the 1990s until it ran into storm waters due to huge losses arising from non-performing loans portfolio.
The U.S. private equity firm Carlyle is one of the main shareholders in Diamond Bank, which had a strong focus on banking for retail customers and small businesses.
There have been speculations of why the Diamond Bank dream came to an abrupt end on the first day of April as the lender is subsumed under the Access Bank franchise due to the timely takeover.
Many have attributed the failure of Dimond to poor management by its immediate past executives, who overexposed the lender to the oil and gas, and power firms.
Diamond Bank began as a private limited liability company on March 21, 1991 (the company was incorporated on December 20, 1990). Ten years later, in February 2001, it became a universal bank.
The lender was listed on the NSE by its founder, Pascal Dozie in early 2000, his son Uzoma Dozie became the chief executive of the lender in 2014 and was the last CEO before the bank was merged with Access.
However, with the removal of Diamond Bank's name from the official list of the local bourse, the NSE gave its approval for the listing of additional 6.62 billion shares of Access Bank, taking into consideration the allocations of shares to the shareholders of Diamond Bank under the scheme of merger agreed both to by the two lenders, their shareholders and sanctioned by the regulatory authorities and court.
The delisting and the listing of the additional shares for Access bank brought to conclusion the merge scheme for the two lenders, which was first announced last November.
"The entire 23,160,388,968 ordinary shares of Diamond Bank Plc were delisted from the Daily Official List of The Exchange," the NSE said in a statement. According to the NSE, with the listing of the additional 6.62 billion shares, the total issued and fully paid up shares of Access Bank has increased from 28.93 billion shares to 35.55 billion shares.
The National Council of the NSE had last week gave its approval for the listing of additional shares of the Access Bank.
Access Bank has last year announced its plans to acquire its rival Diamond Bank in a scheme that has seen the emergence of Africa's largest lender by customer base.
The two lenders consummated the process last month following the regulatory approval and court sanction of the merger scheme.
On Sunday, Access Bank unveiled a new brand identity to reflect the merger of operations of the two entity, bringing to an end the process of consolidations.
With the conclusion of the merger, the lender now operating under the Access Bank franchise has a total of 27,000 staff across 592 branches spanning three continents, 12 countries and with 29 million customers.
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