Unfortunately for us in Nigeria, merchant banking has not been fully tapped into. The most common is retail banking where every person is establishing branches and acquiring a lot of retail customers. So, we have decided that we are going to do merchant banking and do it the way it ought to be. Four merchant banks plus Nova, that is five, we believe is still very little for Nigeria.

After taking a hit from profit taking that pervaded the equities market last week, the low priced banking stocks again rebounded to profitability today in line with the general market sentiment.

At the end of week’s trading today, 40 companies appreciated in price compared to 32 companies that recorded price depreciation, while the price of 100 companies remained unchanged.

Banks that conform to Islamic financial practice are on the rise among Germany’s Muslim population of around five million, a spokesman for KT Bank, a subsidiary of an Istanbul-based bank, said in Cologne on Friday.

The top gainers chart on the Nigerian Stock Exchange, NSE, was dominated by oil and gas as well as banking stocks at the end of transaction today.