Diamond Bank to increase branches to 300

Diamond Bank Plc has announced plans to grow its business network in Nigeria to 300 branches from 220 by the end of next year as it focuses on retail banking, the Chief Executive Officer of the bank, Mr. Alex Otti, said on Tuesday.Reuters reported that Otti, who took over the helm at the mid-tier lender in April, told a conference call that the focus for the bank in the medium term was to grow organically but that it remained open to acquisitions as the opportunity arose.We intend to grow to 300 locations in Nigeria by the next financial year, Otti said, adding that the lender also intended to gradually expand its operations in other West African countries.Diamond operates outside Nigeria in mainly Franco-phone West Africa and has 17 branches in Benin Republic. It set up new subsidiaries in Cote DIvoire, Togo and Senegal at the end of the third quarter, he said.Shares in the lender fell by 2.58 per cent to N3.40 at the end of trading on Tuesday, underperforming the main share index, which was down 1.88 per cent.Otti said that Diamond had indicated interest to state-owned bad bank Asset Management Corporation Nigeria - set up last year to help recapitalise nine banks bailed out by the Central Bank of Nigeria in 2009 - in acquiring one of the three lenders that were nationalised in August.But he said management was not distracted by that and would concentrate on organic growth for the moment. AMCON had said in September it intended to run the nationalised lenders for at least two to three years before looking for buyers.Last Friday, Diamond Bank posted a pre-tax loss of N425.47m ($2.7m) in the nine months to September, due to higher loan loss provisioning, compared with N7bn pre-tax profit in the same period last year.
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