Affected investors totaling over a hundred and seventy from twenty defunct financial management companies (FMCs) have collectively received GHS 7.77 million from the management of GCB Capital Limited.
The payment comes days after these companies received clearance from the court for their liquidation and the official liquidator, Jemima Oware had announced the payment of bailout packages for the first batch of investors.
Speaking in an interview, the Managing Director of GCB Capital, Kofi K. El-Awuku, categorically stated that the clients of twenty defunct FMCs have been collated with invitation doled out to sign onto the program.
With this, he intimated that those with submitted claims and have had redemption request processed fall within the region of about two hundred.
“So the clients of the 20 for whom liquidation orders have been received and gazetted were invited to voluntarily sign on to the program and the number we got at our last check was a 2852. And out of these, the total number that have actually had their redemption request processed since redemption window opened on Wednesday is about 200”.
“For those who have submitted redemption request and have had these processed and paid it’s just under 200 but the number of those actually submitted is immediately hard to tell as the request keeps coming in, and we need to actually have a process of determining the submissions that we have received and collate them. However, payments to the first batch of over 170 investors amounted to GHS 7.77 million”.
In furtherance, Mr. El-Awuku noted that the bailout programme is being implemented via a special purpose entity, the Amalgamated Mutual Fund PLC which provides leeway for claims of over 2,850 investors totaling GHS 563.65 million.
He further explained that the fund’s Tier 1 component affords clients who have completed the onboarding process to redeem shares for cash within 48 hours and Tier 2 component which is long-term in nature with withdrawal restrictions.
“The vehicle that we have created is a mutual fund with various underlying assets. However, this being a special bailout intervention by government, we have received funding from government to do principally two things. Immediately, to make payouts to those who have been crying for money for a while and also do a bit that is a managed fund portion. Indeed, the fund is called the Amalgated mutual fund PLC. It has two components. The tier 1 which enables clients to immediately access a bit of their investment and tier 2 component which is more long term. Our job is to manage the immediate needs of clients with big terms”.
On May 31, 2019, 347 microfinance companies had their license revoked by the Bank of Ghana as part of the financial sector cleanup.
In August 2019, the Bank of Ghana also revoked the licenses of 23 Insolvent Savings and Loans companies and Finance Houses.
These actions were in line with Section 123 (1) of the Banks and Specialised Deposit-Taking Institutions Act, 2016 (Act 930), which requires the Bank of Ghana to revoke the license of a Bank or Specialised Deposit-Taking Institution (SDI) where the Bank of Ghana determines that the institution is insolvent.
