Kenyatta, Ndegwa, Mwangi families pocket Ksh1.62 billion dividends

By Moses Ngahu The families of Mzee Jomo Kenyatta, former Central Bank Governor Philip Ndegwa and the Equity Group chief executive James Mwangi will this year pocket a combined Ksh1.62 billion in what is being regarded as a record banking profits delivered to outsize shareholder payout. Out of the three families, the Kenyatta’s will pocket the biggest profit share in equivalent of Ksh652.5 million from their 13.5 percent of the NCBA Group stake. With the increase, NCBA doubled their dividend per share on Wednesday to Ksh3 per share for the year to December 2021. The Ndegwa family, which is said to own 11.7 percent stake in the same bank will earn Ksh580.8 million in dividends for the same period. NCBA was formed as a result of a merger between the listed NIC Bank and a private CBA Group back in 2019. The bank stated that their profits for the year to December had more than doubled to Ksh1.22 billion from last financial year profits of Ksh4.57 billion. This performance has been seen across the industry, with most banks reporting double profits from the previous year. Seven of nine tier-one banks have already reported their financial results of the year 2021 which have doubled their net earnings. This sums up a total net of Ksh128.1 billion compared to Ksh69.9 billion in the year 2020. On Tuesday, Equity Bank announced its first dividend in three years with Ksh3 per share. This is after they doubled their net profit to Ksh40 billion. Mwangi, who owns 3.4 percent of the direct stake in the bank will pocket Ksh383.4 million. His amount has been seen more than a third of NSE-listed firms. His 188.6 million shares in Equity have been valued at about Ksh6.52 billion. Co-op Bank will also pay individual investor Ballobhai Patel Ksh34 million in dividends for his 0.58 percent stake in the bank. On the other hand, dividends boom has also hit Central Bank of Kenya (CBK) after they loosened their restriction a on shareholder payouts as the country recovers from the effects of Covid-19. The NSE-listed banks have been reported to have halved their dividends payouts in 2020 to Ksh17.1 billion from Ksh31.7 billion in the previous year.