While the market has been hoping that Stanbic Bank Botswana would float their shares to be quoted on the Botswana Stock Exchange in the near future, the bank’s masters in Johannesburg have indicated that they are not in a hurry to list.
Latest data indicates that Stanbic Bank Botswana has been one of the country’s fastest growing banks.
Addressing the media in Johannesburg recently, the Deputy Chief Executive of Standard Bank Group, of which Stanbic Bank Botswana is a member, discounted any insinuations that the Botswana outfit would be approaching the market any time soon.
Ben Kruger said the priority is to grow Stanbic Bank Botswana as a private entity.
“Listing on the stock exchange is not always universally good. Of course, we have done a lot of work in Botswana as would be shown by latest data. We are now among the top three banks in the country. But at the moment we are of the view that our trading multiples are low. This is not to say we have any anti-feelings of listing. We have listed in many other countries. And we will do it in Botswana when we feel it’s the right time to do it,” said Kruger.
The Standard Bank Group executive said at the moment they are still putting the business on track.
“We have been doing that over the last two years and results are beginning to show,” he said.
Stanbic Bank Botswana’s reluctance to list on the Botswana Stock Exchange has been a recurring theme on the minds of many analysts and media over many years now. In other quarters, the reluctance to list has produced public relations backlashes that Stanbic Bank does not want to empower locals much less share its profits with them.
This has also created an impression that Standard Bank Group is not keen to help Botswana Government to grow the country’s capital markets. Curiously, competitors that arrived in the market much later than Stanbic have since listed with the Botswana Stock Exchange.
The calls for Stanbic to list have grown louder as the bank’s footprint inside the country grew.
Problems related to liquidity in the Botswana Stock Exchange have also put pressure on authorities to put pressure on listing candidates, of which Stanbic is undoubtedly one of the biggest.
A few years ago, another Standard Bank senior Executive, Sim Tshabalala, also found himself parrying questions on the bank’s long term commitment to Botswana.
An analyst who did not wish to be named said Stanbic’s listing with the Botswana Stock exchange is long overdue.
He said there were no longer plausible reasons for the bank to stay away.
