Nedbank eyes Nigeria

Cape Town - South Africa's fourth-biggest bank Nedbank is keeping an eye on Nigeria for expansion opportunities, its chief executive said on Thursday.

CEO Tom Boardman told Reuters in an interview the bank was looking to expand although trading remained "very tough".

"We also have aspirations to go slightly further afield. Nigeria's the one that jumps to everybody's mind and we've been keeping an eye on it for some time," he said on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum Africa summit in Cape Town.

"But when you look at the prices at which some of the Nigerian banks were trading pre the (global economic) crisis, they were horrifically expensive."

Boardman said he expected the South African economy to contract by at least 2% in 2009. South Africa dived into its first recession in 17 years in the first three months of 2009, its sharpest economic contraction in a quarter of a century.

- Reuters