The Minority in Parliament has accused the Agricultural Development Bank (adb) of pre-selling the bank to a foreign investor instead of selling its shares.
The Minority’s spokesperson on finance, Dr. Anthony Akoto Osei told Citi News that signing a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with a prospective shareholder is not the normal practice when a company is offloading shares.
“We are hearing stories which are quite serious… They have sold shares to some companies already through an MoU. That is not offloading shares; it means you have pres-sold and that is even more serious,” he said.
On 4th June, the management of adb signed an MoU with a foreign company known as Atlas Mara Limited for an initial equity investment of $50 million.
Under the terms of the agreement, Atlas Mara is to be given ordinary shares to the tune of 25% of adb as part of the IPO.
The company in turn is demanding significant influence in board appointments, CEO appointments, adb’s yearly budget, among others
It is also further demanding that the board of adb must have a maximum ceiling of 11 members and any shareholder with 10% shareholding reserves the right to appoint a member to the board.
This means Atlas Mara will have the right to appoint 2 members of the board.
Dr. Akoto Osei indicated that considering the seriousness of the matter, the Minority members will meet to take a decision on what to do.
“We are surprised that they have gone ahead… So we will meet tomorrow and at that time, we will take a decision on what to do,” he said.
He however accused the management of adb of breaching the rules of the court by going ahead with the IPO although the Supreme Court is scheduled to hear the case between them and the Minority on July 14. Adb’s Initial Public Offer (IPO) commenced last Friday with the intent to offer more than 80 million shares on the Ghana Stock Exchange (GSE).
This is regardless of the fact that Member of Parliament (MP) for New Juaben South, Dr Mark Assibey Yeboah had filed a suit at the Supreme Court insisting the IPO should first be approved by Parliament.
Dr. Akoto Osei bemoaned the conduct of the bank insisting it is in clear breach of the rules of the court.
“We know the case is scheduled to be heard on the 14th, I am not a lawyer but we think that that is in contempt of court,” he added.
Source: citifmonline.com
