It comes as no surprise that the den of graft that is HF Group has posted a staggering 1.7 billion loss for the financial year 2020.
The mortgage financier likes to peddle excuses that a slow down in the real estate market and the adverse effects of Covid-19 are the sole determinants of its woes but in reality their losses and collapse in share price started in 2016 when former sacked Credit Director Kevin Isika (who eventually won his court battle against HF and was awarded 8.9 million shillings and the editor of this site cnyakundi.com released numerous explosive dossiers on the pilferage of the bank by former Group CEO Frank Ireri,former bank CEO Sam Waweru plus at least 10 other Directors and senior managers who were eventually sent home due to the public exposes of their graft.
Yes we agree that slow down in real estate market and covid-19 has affected profitability of all banks but these negative factors have resulted in profit declines of the banks listed on the stock exchange not all out catastrophic losses like HF Group.The mortgage financier remains the only bank listed on the Nairobi Stock Exchange that has posted losses for the financial year 2020.
The current group CEO Robert Kibaara (who had earlier been sacked from National Bank ???) never learnt from the mistakes that led to the downfall of Ireri and continue with the corruption gravy train by his predecessor Ireri. As highlighted in detail on https://cnyakundi.com/the-malpractices-that-has-seen-shareholders-lose-billions-at-hf-group/ Kibaara has made the bank his personal thiefdom to the detriment of depositors, creditors and shareholders.
HF Group is so cash deprived that it had to seek a 1 billion cash injection from Britam. The challenge at the bank is that there has been a silent bank run especially with high net worth corporate depositors who as soon as their fixed deposits mature, pull out their funds to deposit in larger more stable tier 1 banks.
It’s the same type of silent bank run that played out at the decadent Chase Bank from October 2015 to March 2016 before the spectacular public bank run of April 2016 that led to their collapse. The bank has been so drained by these corporate depositor withdrawals necessitating the Britam cash injection.
Thus, retail depositors and naive corporate depositors should be wary and not be caught unawares as they were in the April 2016 Chase Bank debacle.HF Group has been such a major thorn on Britam which is also facing financial difficulty resulting in the retrenchment of nearly half of its executive management that Britam itself is throwing the towel on HF Group and recently announced that they plan to sell a part of its 48.2 percent stake in mortgage financier HF Group to one of the country’s big banks as part of a review of its investment portfolio.
With the steep losses, collapse in share price and voluminous exposes of graft one wonders why there are still shareholders, depositors and creditors in this decadent institution.
