Standard Chartered to Hire More Staff for South Africa Business

By Mike Cohen
(Bloomberg) — Standard Chartered Plc, the British lender that generates the majority of its earnings in Asia, plans to hire about 50 people in South Africa by the end of the year to grow its wholesale banking services.
“We had a very good year last year,” Ebenezer Essoka, chief executive officer of the bank’s South African unit, said in an interview in Cape Town yesterday. “We continue to trade well. Growth will continue.”
There are opportunities in corporate advisory services, project finance, commodity trading services and private equity transaction funding, he said. The bank currently employs about 200 people in South Africa, 50 more than 18 months ago.
Essoka declined to comment on whether Standard Chartered would consider entering South Africa’s retail market or make an acquisition to do. Old Mutual Plc on June 2 denied reports that it was in talks to sell its 54 percent stake in Nedbank Group Ltd., South Africa’s fourth largest bank, to Standard Chartered.
“In consumer banking in South Africa if you are not ready to spend the money the big boys are spending, it’s a graveyard,” Essoka said. “We have got a lot of respect for our competitors.”
Standard Chartered operates 160 branches in 14 African countries and has more than 6,000 employees on the continent, which contributed 9 percent of its pretax profit last year. The London-based bank agreed to buy the custody business of Barclays Plc in Africa in April to serve corporate banking clients.
Standard Chartered sees South Africa, Nigeria, Angola, Ghana and Uganda as the African markets with the greatest opportunities for expansion, Essoka said.
“There are untapped opportunities in Ivory Coast and Cameroon,” he said. “Ethiopia has hardly been touched.”
–Editors: Dylan Griffiths.