By Stephen Adams of Global Counsel
Events at west African lender Ecobank over the past six months have been widely and rightly interpreted as an important test for the credibility of African bank governance and regulation. A combination of internal whistleblowing, regulatory pressure and shareholder activism did for former CEO Thierry Tanoh and have prompted a fairly substantial overhaul of bank governance. All good news for African good governance.
But the bigger question for African banks like Ecobank is still unanswered. This is simply that as a cross-border African financial institution, Ecobank is evolving much faster than the institutions that supervise and regulate it. With operations in more than 30 sub-Saharan markets, Ecobank is a complex prospect for African bank supervisors and one that they are only just starting to get to grips with.
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