Some of the assets pencilled down for sale by Shell have been abandoned as local financial institutions lacked capacity to facilitate their acquisition by interested indigenous investors.
Guarantee Trust Bank, according to Bloomberg, discloses that lenders in Nigeria likely don’t have enough dollars to fund clients seeking to acquire assets put on sale by the local unit of Shell.
Guaranty Trust Bank Plc doesn’t see the likelihood of any client raising the estimated $2.3 billion needed to purchase the Shell Nigeria assets, said Segun Agbaje, Chief Executive Officer, CEO of the financial group that owns the lender.
Such a deal would require a syndication of up to $1.8 billion, and it “can be very tough to raise this kind of funding locally at the moment,” Agbaje said.
Shell said in May it would exit its onshore oil position in Nigeria, which it no longer considers compatible with its strategic ambitions.
“When I look at the books of Nigerian banks today, I don’t see a lot of dollar liquidity,” Agbaje told an investor conference call in Lagos on Tuesday. “It’s becoming a very difficult deal for people to pull off.”
