New Heritage Bank Set To Disappoint Staff

Contrary to the belief that Heritage Bank Limited would mesmerize the banking industry following its acquisition of Enterprise Bank Plc, the opposite is what is set to happen.

Information available to Aproko247 revealed that Heritage Bank Plc is rather set to bring retrogression to the industry, as it is set to sack thousands of its staff.

In a recent media event organised by Heritage Bank Limited for its chairman Akinsola Akinfemiwa, the Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer of Heritage Bank Limited, Ifie Sekibo was quoted as saying that Heritage Bank Limited will sell off all subsidiaries of its acquired Enterprise Bank Plc in order to focus on core banking.

Sekibo’s words: ‘the subsidiaries acquired along with Enterprise Bank Plc will be disposed of at a later time, as Heritage Bank intends to focus mainly on the business of commercial banking.’

As at the time of its acquisition, Enterprise Bank Plc is known to own seven subsidiaries and two associated companies with a network of over 150 branches nationwide.

Based on Sekibo’s above statement of selling off the two associated companies, seven subsidiaries, the implication is that employees working in these companies would be laid off.

From what we gathered, there are thousands people on their payroll.

Panic has already gripped staff of the companies going by another statement credited to Sekibo that: ‘The bank will stop injecting funds into the subsidiaries pending the time that they will be sold off.’

Interestingly, this seems to go against why Heritage Bank Limited was declared the preferred bidder of Enterprise Bank Plc instead of Fidelity Bank, which many people thought would win the bid.

It would be recalled that the former Managing Director of the Asset Management Corporation of Nigeria (AMCON), Mustaha Chike-Obi was quoted as saying the Sekibo-led bank had promised to ensure that Enterprise Bank Plc’s employees keep their job during the integration.

But the latest development seems to contradict Chike-Obi’s statement.

Asides Chike-Obi’s reassuring statement, another person who also assured employees of Enterprise Bank Plc of the security of their job was Heritage Bank Limited’s former Executive Director Ivory Banking, Mary Akpobome, who was announced Enterprise Bank MD.

She was quoted as saying that staffers of the acquired bank need not fret over any case of mass sack, as a specialized method of pruning had been setup to ensure only those who do not fit in are sacked.

Akpobomeh’s words “our top line focus is to ensure that people’s jobs are preserved based on their value creating capability. A key element of our people resourcing and placement program is based on global standard type appraisal to determine how fit they are for the combined entity.

“In the event that some of the staff are discovered to lack required competencies, we will have in place an appropriate program to deal with such occurrence. This Assignment is being carried out by a set of reputable consulting firms as part of the on-going integration program”.

Interestingly, this is not what seems to be happening and the situation becomes amazing especially when the fact that Heritage Bank Limited prides itself with a commitment to the promise of creating and preserving wealth across generations through highly personalised banking service is considered.

Observers of the development at Heritage Bank Limited are saying that what they have simply done is called Asset Stripping, a situation where you buy a company and cannibalize it by selling parts of it to recover the initially invested capital.