Tetrad shareholders give nod to surrender bank licence

Shareholders of Tetrad Investment Bank (TIB) have resolved to surrender the banking licence and transform the company into a property firm.

They also resolved to block the company to be placed under corporate rescue at the extraordinary general meeting last week.

Last year, a minority shareholder, under the TFS Management Company, applied to the High Court to interdict the EGM, objecting to the resolution to transform the bank into a property firm.

TFS, which manages three fund assets, owns about 13 percent of Tetrad Investment Bank.

The asset firm gained a stake in Tetrad after a scheme of arrangement to cancel the debt in exchange for ownership.

About 96 percent of the shareholders approved a resolution to block the placement of the company under corporate rescue, 80,28 percent voted to surrender the banking licence while 80,45 percent voted to change its principal business from that of a bank to the business of property management and development of the company’s property assets.

The bank is estimated to have a US$13 million asset portfolio.

TIB was incorporated on 12 June 1995 as Tetrad Securities Limited. The institution commenced operations in 1996 after obtaining a licence to operate as a discount house in terms of the Banking Act.

Tetrad Securities Limited’s discount house licence was converted to a merchant banking licence on 6 March 2009.

But TIB’s licence was withdrawn by the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe in 2014. In 2015, the bank was then placed under provisional liquidation, while it looked for a new investor.

Its liabilities exceeded assets by US$1,5 million.-ebusinessweekly