Stock Exchange ( Ecobank Confident of Appeals on Thierry Tanoh’s $26 Million Court Judgments )

Lagos (INVESTADVOCATE)-Pan-African lender, Ecobank Transnational Incorporated (ETI) said on Friday it’s confident about the robustness and merits of  the appeals on judgments which awarded over US$26 million to Thierry Tanoh, it former chief executive officer (CEO) by Ivoirian and Togolese courts.

The pan-African lender in a notice to the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) said its board held a special meeting in Accra on Thursday to discuss these recent court judgments in Côte d’Ivoire and Togo.

According to ETI the board of the bank at the special meeting evaluated its legal position in regard to these judgments, and resolved to pursue its appeals. “It is confident about the robustness and merits of these appeals, and feels assured that the higher courts will ultimately uphold them. It also resolved to continue other legal proceedings against Mr Tanoh,” the bank added.

ETI says its new board of directors, which was constituted in 2014, is a highly credible and vastly experienced board; “under its guidance, the group’s management has subsequently completed a rigorous 51-point action plan to implement best practice governance controls and systems, including quarterly reporting to regulators,” it affirmed.

The pan-African lender further affirmed that since the inception of the new board and the current management team, two institutional investors, Nedbank and Qatar National Bank have both become significant ETI shareholders.

Similarly, the Ecobank Group reaffirms its financial strength and its commitment to transparent corporate governance as a systemically important banking group in Africa.

Mid-January, Francois Koumoin, the president of the commercial court in Abidjan ordered ETI to pay  Tanoh its former CEO the sum of 7 billion CFA Francs ($12.3 million), whose appointment was terminated in March 2014 after he had spent less than two (2) years in the position.

Also, a Togolese labour court  awarded Tanoh, $11.6 million as alleged damages for supposed ‘wrongful dismissal.

In March 2014, the pan-African lender announced Tanoh stepped down from his position effective March 12, 2014 following regulatory concerns which centred on poor corporate governance issues and fraud practices on the part of the bank’s management. Albert Essien, Tanoh’s deputy replaced him as CEO.

At the end of trading on the Nigerian bourse on Friday, share price of the bank lost 0.83 kobo to N16.17 from N17.00; declining 4.88 percent