Nigeria’s Diamond Bank is quitting other West African markets to focus efforts at home and deploy its resources on personal banking business in Africa’s biggest economy, it said on Friday.
The move by Diamond Bank ends the mid-tier lender’s 18-year push abroad.
Several Nigerian banks expanded abroad than a decade ago, encouraged by rising commodity prices and seeking to capitalize on a growing middle class in the region. But prospects have dimmed with a sharp fall in commodity prices since mid-2014 that triggered currency crises in some markets and turned loans sour.
“After 18 years of building the Diamond Bank franchise in other markets in West Africa, the time has come to fully apply our resources to Nigeria,” Diamond Bank Chief Executive Uzoma Dozie said in a statement.
