Again, MTN Group’s Shares Slide as Officials Meet with CBN

Shares in MTN Group, Africa’s biggest telecoms company, have dropped more than four per cent over the uncertainty about the outcome of yesterday’s meeting between the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), officials of CBN, and the four banks involved in the alleged MTN’s illegal repatriation of $8.134 funds from Nigeria.

According to report, the shares further dropped yesterday by 2.21 per cent at 84.10 rand over uncertainty about the outcome of the meeting.

The MTN Group shares had on Monday rose by 2.55 per cent, following the announcement on Sunday by the CBN Governor, Mr. Godwin Emefiele, of the plans by the apex bank to reduce the $8.134 billion fines.

But the shares, it was gathered, plunged again, as a result of the uncertainty about the outcome of the meeting which held yesterday in Abuja.

The CBN met with the representatives of the telecommunications company MTN and banks, to discuss the dispute over the repatriation of $8.134 billion, two sources with direct knowledge of the matter told Reuters.

The dispute is over the transfer of $8.134 billion of funds which the CBN said the company had sent abroad in breach of foreign-exchange regulations.

Nigeria, which accounts for a third of the South African company’s annual core profit, is MTN’s biggest market.

Sources who preferred to remain anonymous, said executives from MTN and the four lenders involved in the case - Standard Chartered, Stanbic IBTC Bank, Citibank and Diamond Bank - held talks with the CBN. MTN declined to comment and on the meeting and the Central Bank’s spokesman did not respond to a text mesage and phone calls requesting for the outcome of the meeting.

The stock has lost around 20 per cent since the demand by Nigeria’s central bank on August 29.

The apex bank said the funds had been illegally moved abroad because the company’s bankers had failed to verify if MTN had met all the foreign exchange regulations.