GT Bank sees 10 pct of profit from outside Nigeria by 2016

LAGOS (Reuters) - Nigeria's Guaranty Trust Bank expects to generate one tenth of group profit outside the country by 2016, after it digests recent acquisitions in East Africa, its chief executive said on Wednesday. "We think East Africa will do well for us, we think Ghana will continue to do well ... and we will go into one more country before 2016 and that will push us," CEO Segun Agbaje told a media briefing. The bank currently earns 6 percent of total profit abroad. Banks in Nigeria, Africa's biggest economy, have been expanding across the continent in recent years to diversify their earnings base. Rival lender UBA, with 19 African subsidiaries has said it expected half of its profit to come from outside Nigeria by 2015, up from 23 percent. Agbaje said GT Bank had made the same amount of money in its newly acquired Kenyan subsidiary in the first quarter of 2014 as the east African unit made for the whole of 2013 before it took over, without giving any figures. GT Bank, Nigeria's top tier lender by return on equity, increased its African subsidiaries to eight, after it acquired 70 percent of Kenya's Fina Bank last year for $110 million, giving it access to Rwanda and Uganda in East Africa. Agbaje said the lender retained 40 percent of its earnings from 2013 to continue to grow its business and had no need to raise additional capital, adding that its capital adequacy ratio was more than 21 percent. GT Bank increased its 2013 pretax profit by 4 percent to 107 billion naira ($649.9 million). The bank, set up in 1991, plans to open 26 new branches in Nigeria this year, expanding its network of 241 branches, Agbaje said. The bank added 25 branches and 1 million retail customers last year.