Nigeria's Access Bank sees 'little' impact from naira devaluation

• Nigeria devalued currency by 8 pct this week

• Devaluation likely to hit demand for bank's rights issue

Nigeria's Access Bank does not expect the naira's devaluation to have a significant impact on its business as most of its dollar facilities have been loaned to clients generating foreign currencies, its chief executive said on Wednesday.
Nigeria's central bank devalued the naira by 8 percent and raised interest rates by 100 basis points on Tuesday, hoping to stem losses to its foreign reserves from defending the currency against weaker oil prices.
"It is little or nothing in terms of the implications to my financials just because of where my lending is," Chief Executive Herbert Wigwe told Reuters in an interview in Johannesburg.
Access Bank raised $400 million in Eurobonds earlier this year.
Domestic rates are likely to rise by 200 basis points and hurt lending to the manufacturing and trade business sectors, he said.
The naira devaluation will probably dampen foreign investor demand for Access Bank’s 68 billion naira ($385 million) rights issue as well, Wigwe said. He added that falling oil prices would hurt appetite for the issue too.
Local investors are expected to plug any hole and the bank still anticipates raising an “acceptable portion” of it.
Wigwe said the bank had also been cleared of any wrongdoing after a Securities and Exchange Commission investigation into the freezing of Access Bank’s share price in September.
The Nigerian Stock Exchange suspended the shares for a week after Access Bank applied to the bourse arguing that information on its capital raising was not publicly available and that it wanted to avoid speculations in its shares.