By Elizabeth Adegbesan

FSDH Merchant Bank has distributed to its shareholders N2.84 billion representing 60 percent of its profit after tax (PAT) as dividend for the year ended December 31 2017.

Chairman, FSDH, Mr. Femi Agbaje, disclosed this while addressing shareholders at the annual general meeting (AGM) of the bank held in Lagos.

Highlighting the performance of the bank during the meeting, Agbaje said that earnings per share for the group increased by 55 kobo to 164 kobo from 109 kobo earned in the previous financial year in spite of the challenges in the country’s financial market and global economy.

He said: “We have published our results and we had a really good year. 2017 was good. In the context of how the environment has been the bank did very well. All the companies within the group delivered sparkling results. While other banks are been worried paying large loan loss provisions and being worried about paying dividends we were paying 60 percent of our profit after tax as dividends to our shareholders which is a measure of a good performance and a good capital base with good liquidity.

“In the financial year under review, the FSDH Group recorded a total asset size of N151.7billion.   The group’s shareholders’ funds stood at N34.62 billion as at December 31, 2017. The Group achieved a Profit before Tax (PBT) of N5.56 billion for the financial year ended December 31 2017 compared with the profit of N3.86 billion for the year ended December 31 2016.

“Profit after tax attributable to the group increased by 45.4 percent to N4.74 billion from N3.26 billion for the previous year.   Earnings per share (EPS) for the group were 164 kobo, which is 55 kobo more than the 109 kobo earned in the previous financial year,” he said.

On his part, Non-Executive Director, FSDH, Mr. Tosa Ogbomo said: “This year we are declaring a good dividend which we didn’t do in 2016. It’s been a though couple of years in the economy. I think the shareholders appreciate the bank did well and has gotten to the point where they can actually pay dividend.

They are pretty excited about it. We are all aware of how it was difficult for foreign exchange in 2016 and in 2017 that is what I call ‘number of the liquidity actions’ that the CBN impacted and competitive landscape for banks. It has gotten better and the bank was able to manage through that and hopefully in 2018 it will be a better performance.”