Nepal Investment Bank
Nepal’s financial economy is a work in progress: the country has too many banks, and way too many bad banks. There are too few big companies, so the investment banking divisions of commercial lenders tend to be an afterthought. But there are some exceptions, and Nepal Investment Bank is the best of these.
A regular award-winner with Euromoney, Nepal Investment Bank is one of the country’s largest lenders, in terms of profit, customer deposits, market capitalization, loans and assets.
Formed in 1996 as a joint venture between local partners and Crédit Agricole Indosuez – the latter has long since left the scene – the bank continues to outperform most of its peers. In the first half of the 2018/2019 financial year (in Nepal, a financial year runs from the middle of July), it reported a pre-tax profit of NRs2.84 billion ($25.2 million), up 8.8% from the same period a year earlier, and recorded a non-performing loan ratio of 2%, which was below the industry average.
But Nepal Investment Bank, under the leadership of chief executive Jyoti Pandey, is making strides elsewhere too, pushing into digital banking and, most pertinently in this case, investment banking.
In February 2018, its merchant banking division acquired Ace Capital – a subsidiary of another local lender, Ace Development Bank – and renamed itself NIBL Ace Capital. A fully owned part of Nepal Investment Bank, the new unit has seven branches and paid-up capital of NRs270 million. In the 2017/2018 financial year, it pulled off public issues for 22 local companies, including rights issues and IPOs.
Even in its nascent state, NIB reported a profit of NRs44.6 million through the first six months of the more recent financial year and is bringing the first open-ended mutual fund to the local market.