Access Holdings has released a notice of an Extraordinary General Meeting of Access Holdings PLC on the 18th of December, 2025 to get shareholders nod to raise additional capital for the company. This comes as a surprise to shareholders who had thought that Access Holdings PLC had completed their capital raise following Central Bank of Nigeria's directive last year to shore up the capital base of Nigerian banks. Access Holdings was one of the first commercial banks to meet up with the new minimum Capital base requirement of ₦500 billion ahead of the 2026 deadline through a rights issue done between July and August 2024, where they raised over ₦350 billion with the offer priced at ₦19.75 per share, which took up their shares outstanding to over 53 billion shares.
The Notice of Extraordinary General Meeting which was published on the NGX on the 27th of November, 2025 outlined that the company will be raising an additional capital of up to ₦40 billion or such other amount or their equivalent in foreign currencies as the Board of Directors may determine, through a private placement. They also proposed to increase the share capital of the company from ₦26.658 billion consisting of 53.3 billion ordinary shares to ₦27.646 billion consisting of 55.29 billion, which further dilutes existing shareholders by the creation of over 1.975 billion additional shares. The additional shares created in connection with the private placement is priced at ₦20.25, which is not much different from the last Rights Issue share price at ₦19.75.
Some interesting questions on the minds of shareholders of Access Holdings include:
- Why is the company raising additional share capital just few months after exceeding the CBN's capital base requirement ahead of the deadline?
- What is the use of this additional capital raise, and why at this time?
- Is the bank's expansion drive through acquisitions across Africa too fast? And when will shareholders begin to benefit from the expansion drive?
- When will the bank begin to sweat its assets and capital optimally and begin to give adequate return on assets and capital to investors?
- What is the overall health of the bank, seeing that it was about the only one of the FUGAZ that reported Total Comprehensive loss for the first two quarters of 2025? In addition, they skipped paying interim dividend this year.
- Why is it that while other top tier Nigerian Banks are tactical in the way that they raise capital to reduce dilution of existing shareholders, Access Holdings doe not seem to consider that, but rather seems to be delighted at bloating their outstanding shares, which continues to water down returns per share especially in the near term and impact share price appreciation? For instance, why price this private placement at ₦20.25, when Access Holdings shares at a time this year had traded circa ₦27?
- How many more of such Capital raises should shareholders and investors expect in the near future, and how would that benefit them? Recall that in a previous article we had pointed out the Additional Tier 1 capital component as reported on their balance sheet, which comprises of Mandatory Convertible Notes convertible to ordinary shares of the company at an agreed future date. Is this one of such conversions, or when will such conversions happen?
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