The Board of Directors of Ecobank Transnational Incorporated, parent company of the Ecobank Group, held a special meeting in Accra on Thursday to discuss recent court judgments in Côte d’Ivoire and Togo.
Those judgments awarded over US$26 million to the company’s former CEO, Mr. Thierry Tanoh, whose appointment was terminated in March 2014 after he had spent less than two years in the position.
The board evaluated its legal position in regard to these judgments, and resolved to pursue its appeals. It is confident about the robustness and merits of these appeals, and feels assured that the higher courts will ultimately uphold them. It also resolved to continue other legal proceedings against Mr. Tanoh.
The new board of directors, which was constituted in 2014, is a highly credible and vastly experienced board. Under its guidance, the group’s management has subsequently completed a rigorous 51-point action plan to implement best practice governance controls and systems, including quarterly reporting to regulators. Since the inception of the new board and the current management team, two institutional investors, Nedbank and Qatar National Bank have both become significant ETI shareholders.
The Ecobank Group reaffirms its financial strength and its commitment to transparent corporate governance as a systemically important banking group in Africa. The bank has total assets of over US$23 billion. To further strengthen its financial position, Ecobank, in the last six months, raised approximately US$1 billion in combined equity and debt capital for both its parent company and its business in Nigeria, the largest of the group’s subsidiaries.