THE ROLE OF COMMERCIAL BANKS IN THE FACE OF A DEPRESSED ECONOMY; (A CASE STUDY OF FIRST BANK OF NIGERIA PLC
ABSTRACT
Banking is in the midst of change that has arisen due to economic depression. As government seek to improve economic efficiency and better allocation of resources to solve the problem of economic depression, policy makers are shifting towards openness, competitiveness and market discipline.
In response to the developments, Deposit Money Banks in Nigeria engaged in financial sanitizing, management strengthening, corporate refocusing, Business Process Re engineering (BPR), mergers and acquisitions in order to survive the depressed economy. This whole process is called survival strategies through corporate restructuring.
The writer made efforts to discuss issues, facts and environmental factors surrounding the wave of deposit money banks’ survival in a depressed economy like Nigeria.
The impact of this research in banks was gleaned from five performance indicators namely total assets, total deposits, loans and advances, profit before tax and shareholders’ funds, of First Bank of Nigeria Plc. The research looked at the position of these indicators before and after the sanitizing exercise undertaken by the banks for survival and also, its impact on the entire banking system bearing in mind the effect of globalization on the financial market in particular and the economy at large.
Chapter four shows the presentation and analysis of First Bank’s financial statement with the use of chart, tables, bar chart and graph.
Chapter five summarizes all that was discussed from chapter one to four and gave suggestions on how deposit money banks can survive in a depressed economy.
Finally, this researcher leaves this work open to constructive criticisms and expects future scholars to delve into further research and improve on this work.
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY
Nigerian economy is faced with national and global economic challenges and as such, the financial institutions, especially the banking sector has an option of sanitizing and restructuring its operational processes in order to survive the depressed economy, as well as embarking on a consolidation exercise which would have some wider structural effects on the industry and on the economy as a whole.
