Did the bank foresee the crash and played safe, not being quoted in the Nigerian stock market?
I wish we had a crystal ball which your question implies, where we can anticipate and know what the stock market will do or not do over time. There is no link between the Nigerian Stock Exchange performance and how much Standard Chartered owns in Standard Chartered Bank Nigeria. In Standard Chartered Bank Group, we like to manage the businesses we own in different countries: the more the percentage that we own, the more we can guarantee the performance of that organization. Secondly, and this is the case for Nigeria; Standard Chartered Nigeria is a relatively new business. As a result, Standard Chartered Group took all the risk to invest in Nigeria. Therefore, once the bank starts producing and earning money, Standard Chartered really looks at maximizing its return on investment. We have been in business for 150 years and in some of the mature markets there are business reasons behind our getting quoted on the country’s stock exchange. In the case of India, for brand awareness and busi
