Drama at NMB Zimbabwe AGM

By Ndakaziva Majaka

HARARE – There was drama at NMB Zimbabwe Holdings Limited (NMB)’s annual general meeting (AGM) on Monday, with the group’s chairman Tendai Mundawarara resigning after a failed ouster by shareholders.

After failing to vote out the ex-Ukubambana-Kubatana Investments managing director, shareholders of the Zimbabwe Stock Exchange-listed financial group then re-elected him, but he turned down the term renewal, immediately announcing his resignation.

He was supposed to retire after serving the group for over five years.

“…I feel this is as long as anybody can usefully add value to an organisation,” Mundawarara told shareholders at the three-hour long AGM, adding that “politicians could take a cue” on the need to infuse new blood in any enterprise or institution people will be leading.

“…during the course of the year, I will be stepping down as chair,” he said.

After the vote, it emerged Mundawarira had garnered 40 votes, constituting 321 308 765 of the company’s shares, and translating to 90,1 percent of the votes.

The financial group’s co-founder and renowned banker Julius Makoni was re-elected along with Ben Zwinkles, Maureen Svova, Benedict Chikwanha, Shake Ndiaye and Roger Kiplee.

The shareholders also approved a share buyback of not more than 10 percent of the group’s ordinary shares.

Meanwhile, in the half year to June 2014, the group recorded an attributable profit of $1,4 million.

“This was a significant improvement on the attributable loss of $3,3 million recorded for the year ended December 31, 2013,” said Benefit Washaya, chief executive of the group’s banking subsidiary, NMB Bank.

“The performance of the group has been below budget. It has been adversely affected by tightening interest margins and the poor performance of the economy.”

He said the bank had tightened its lending requirements with loans only being given to “customers with a high credit rating.”

He added that they targeted to lower non-performing loans (NPLs), which stood at 20, 01 percent as at June 30, 2014.

“We have continued to focus on the bank’s NPLs and we are targeting an NPL ratio below 15 percent by December 2014,” Washaya said.

“We are in the process of implementing a credit management system which we expect to go live by September 30, 2014.

“Apart from all this, in the mid-term fiscal review, three types of banks were specified and the group is eyeing first tier status by December 30, 2014, meaning our minimum capital threshold will be resting at $100 million.” Daily News