Kenya Commercial Bank

Kenya Commercial Bank (KCB) is a Financial Services Provider headquartered in Nairobi, Kenya.

It is among the three largest banks in Kenya with assets of more than $1.2 billion. The other two are Barclays Bank of Kenya and Standard Chartered Bank of Kenya.

KCB is listed on the Nairobi Stock Exchange. The Government of Kenya owns 26% of the company. There are plans to offload these shares to the public in 2007.

The current Managing Director is Terry Davidson who replaced Gareth George in 2002. Davidson will handover to his deputy, Martin Oduor-Otieno, in 2007.

Recent history

KCB went through an extremely difficult period when Alexander Kaminchia was the Executive Chairman. Even though KCB made "super-profits", it turned out that the loans made to ill-advised ventures, politically connected individuals and companies were actually non-performing and were thus written off by the new management in subsequent years.

The provisioning and write-offs of these loans severely affected KCB's capital base. As part of a recovery programme to increase public confidence in the bank, in 2004 KCB launched a successful Rights Issue to bolster its capital to meet the Central Bank of Kenya's requirements.

Shares in KCB have, until 2004, historically underperformed most other publicly listed banks. The exception being National Bank of Kenya which was plundered during the Executive Chairmanship of John Simba. The KCB share price has recovered dramatically since elections in 2004.

Kenya presence

KCB has more than 146 branches throughout Kenya, making it the largest banking network in the region. It has the largest number of own-branded ATMs in Kenya. Since 2004 most of the branches in Kenya have been rebranded as part of a wider corporate branding exercise.

ubsidiaries

* Savings and Loan (S&L) is a mortgage company headquartered in Nairobi with branches in other major Kenyan towns.
* KCB Tanzania has branches in Dar es Salaam, Arusha and Mwanza.
* In 2006 the company opened KCB Sudan with two branches in Southern Sudan, one in Juba and a second in Rumbek. It is the only international bank with a presence in this market.
* Following record profits in 2006, in early 2007 the company announced plans to expand their regional presence into Uganda and Rwanda.

Officers & Management

* Susan Mudhune (Chairperson)
* Martin Oduor-Otieno (CEO)

Sports

KCB owns a sports club, that has teams in Kenyan football, rugby, volleyball and basketball leagues. See Kenya Commercial Bank (sports club).

Kenya Commercial Bank has been sponsoring the Safari Rally since 2003.

External links

* [http://www.kcb.co.ke/ Company's home page]
* [http://www.kcb.co.ke/about/history.asp History behind the company]