The First City Monument Bank Story.

1.    From a heritage of excellence to a leading player on the new Nigerian banking landscape.
The First City group has over 30 years operating experience; the group started operations in 1977 with CSL, while FCMB began in 1983. We have continuously won awards including the prestigious Euromoney Award in 2007 for the Best Investment Bank in Nigeria. We are a top ten bank today and one of top 3 fastest growing banks in the country.  We were one of Nigeria's leading merchant banks, advising on many of Nigeria's highest profile deals and acting for many of the leading multinational and Nigerian companies.

2.    High Growth Company
FCMB is one of the top 3 fastest growing banks in the country and this growth has been fuelled by branch expansion, the growth in the capital markets and new focus on consumer banking. Our earnings growth has continued in the current financial year-see table below.

3.    Outperformed the market
Our share price has outperformed the market and the banking sector. From January 2006, the growth in our share price has been 6 times that of the market; while the ASI has grown at 56%, the FCMB stock grew at 340%. Furthermore, since the last IPO, the share price has moved from N4 to N17.45, over 345% growth; we have consistently surpassed all our forecasts for both earnings and dividends.

4.    A well priced offer
The FCMB offer is cheap for various reasons;

• N14/share compared with a dividend yield of 4% in 2008 and growing to over 7% by 2010
• On a historical PE ratio basis; historically, FCMB�€™s PE was about 22 but at the offer price, FCMB Stock will trade at a PE ratio of 13.85 and against a banking sector average of 28.
• In comparison with its peers, the FCMB stock is still the cheapest. FCMB�€™s trailing PE ratio is 22.35 compared with its peer average of 31.

Clearly the offer is of very good value and yet is the fastest growing bank with the best people impressive strategy.

5.    Strong vision and prospects for growth
Our vision is to be the premier financial services group of African origin. The strategic focus is very clear; Consumer and Investment bank, which are high growth high margin segments. The size of the opportunity in these markets is significant.
 
In the Consumer segment, there is a housing shortage of N700BN or 14 million housing units, evidencing a huge demand for mortgages. In addition, while there are less than 500,000 active personal loans, there are over 35 million GSM subscribers, pointing again to the potential of this market.

In the Investment banking space, market cap as a percentage of GDP is just over 30%, which is small when compared with the same index for many other emerging markets, whose average is approx 100%. Clearly this market can double without being overvalued. To further consolidate our share of this market, we will acquire CSL Stockbrokers who will immediately add N1.2 billion to our profits.

Other opportunities in Infrastructure arise from the minimum spending level of US$9 BILLION required to plug the infrastructure gaps while in the Energy sector, an average spending of US$15 billion is required annually for government to achieve its various objectives in the Oil and Gas sector.

The opportunity in these various markets lies in their size and the potential profits as well as our being well equipped to play in them.

6.    An internationally recognized opportunity
FCMB's success story has been recognized worldwide. Prestigious overseas investors have taken direct investments in FCMB to participate in its strong growth and exciting future.

Helios Investment Partners, the UK based investment firm which specializes in private equity investments in sub-Saharan Africa together with certain other foreign investors holds 15% of FCMB's equity. These are the Commonwealth Development Corporation, Overseas Private Investment Company, (investment arms of the British and US Government, respectively) and Soros with funds under management in excess of US$30 billion. There is also GLG Investment Partners, a multi billion dollar leading investment manager based in London. Clearly, these are very knowledgeable investors and as such, the average investor is in excellent company. 

7.    Reasonable yet Impressive forecasts



These forecasts are driven by Consumer banking, Corporate Banking Loan growth and Cash management, Investment banking transactions and the CSL acquisition.