LONDON - THE head of Nigeria's central bank, Mr Lamido Sanusi, said on Monday he was prepared to break with a decades-old ban on foreign takeovers of its banks, in an interview with the Financial Times.
'What we have today is that the central bank is not likely to support a foreign bank owning more than 10 per cent of a top tier Nigerian bank. That is something that in my view needs to be looked at again,' Mr Sanusi said.
He said the ban was not a legal requirement but a policy of the previous leadership of the Central Bank of Nigeria.
'If as governor of central bank I am okay to have a bank owned by nominees and I don't know who owns them, why wouldn't I be comfortable with a bank owned by Barclays, or HSBC or China Construction Bank, who I know?' he added.
