MAKING THE FAMILY BUSINESS WORK

Recently the Musizi Sustainable Business Institute facilitated the world renown Drucker School of Management to hold a workshop on generational wealth.

My friend Charles Ociici, boss at Enterprise Uganda used to have a statistic about a decade ago, that there was only one indigenous business that has transcended a generation, that has outlived its founder and gone on to survive and thrive.

At this workshop the Institute’s founder Elaine Alowo Matovu, said that statistic may have improved but not by much, with only one in five Ugandan businesses transcending a generation. And of those most were not indigenous founded businesses.

She also pointed out that in the next decade or so there will a massive wealth transfer – about $84trillion, between generations, but almost of all of this will be in the global north.

Should we care?

My understanding is that after creating wealth, our families cannot seem to hang on to it, if only for the benefit of future generations. This trend is worrying because statistically you cannot build meaningful companies in one generation. As one friend of mine once said, the problem with Uganda is that we do not have enough wealthy people. And he was not talking about commission agents and air suppliers.

People who have built wealth independently think different from the rest of us non-producers and are key to driving a nation forward. The fewer they are, their voices are drowned out by the mediocre and society does not progress.

It has been found variously that Uganda is the most entrepreneurial country in the world. This is no mean feat. The challenge is that companies that emerge, are not sustainable as evidenced by their inability to live beyond the founder.

For us mere mortals, we may blame bad luck for this, but there is actually a science to it.

Enter the Drucker School of Management and more specifically the Drucker School Global Family Business Institute, who have made it their raison d’etre to understand and help family businesses navigate the minefield of family dynamics and generational succession planning.

Lauded as the father of modern business management Peter Drucker, whose name the school carries, has had his methodology, previously tailored to public and professionally managed businesses, adopted to the unique challenges of the family business.

"During the workshop that was held over three days, participants explored issues of their money philosophies, shared family dreams, advising and creating business systems designed for family  businesses....

But the subject that caught my attention for its universality beyond business was “raising children… with batteries included.”

It is a no-brainer that in order for the kids to take over from you and thrive, even take the business to the next level there needs to be some formative training in that direction, the question has always been how does one do this?

Communities like the Indian business families seem to have hacked this process, bringing in the children into the family business and slowly handing it over in a process for there seems to be no written manual.

The Drucker School has distilled it into six keys to raising children to take over the business.

First, they need to know where they are from, they have found that children who know their families and family histories tend to be more resilient in the face of life’s challenges.

"We need to bring up our children to be grateful rather than entitled, the latter being a killer of business sustainability. If they feel gratitude for the business and what it has done for the family they are more likely to want to carry it on and to the next level.

That our children need to have a dream or goals because “If they don’t have a target they will wander and wonder.” Relatedly, do they have the grit or resilience to thrive as adults? If they are not reaching beyond themselves to achieve future goals and overcoming the ups and downs to attain these, how will they develop any resilience?

We need to align our children’s relationship with money to that of wealth creation, shift their tendencies towards saving and investment over consumption.

And finally the million dollar question, are spending time with your kids, to pass on your values and the vision for your business. Educating them well is all very nice but it does not mean they will want to or be ready to take over the reins of your business when the time comes.

"That planning for generational wealth starts early, is intentional and follows some formula should provide some consolation to our businesses grappling with this question every waking hour of their day.

It was an eye opening event for all the participants who made the workshop and the Musizi Sustainable Business Institute intends to make it an annual event and central to their elevation to a university in the near future.

 

MTN’S SECOND BITE AT THE CHERRY

Last week telecom giant, MTN offered seven percent of its shares to the public. The shares on offer, were shares first offered to the public in December 2021, that were not taken up and which they are under regulatory obligation to sell by December.

"In the company’s much awaited Initial Public offer (IPO) in December 2021, MTN offered 20 percent of itself to the public but only 65 percent of the offer was snapped up. It came as a great shock, as lesser companies have been oversubscribed in previous offers...

Industry players today think a repeat is unlikely.

At the end of 2021 the global economy was only just finding its feet after the Covid-19 lockdown. In addition, in a bid to beat back inflation interest rates had risen in western economies and monies had fled our shores to go back home.

The selling of shares to the public by MTN was a condition of the renewal of the license, it is arguable that given a choice, given the economic situation of the time, even MTN may have wanted to hold off a little. They did not and the IPO fell short.

Since then though, trading in MTN shares have provided a boost to the Uganda Securities Exchange (USE) and even if the share trading at sh170 before suspension of activity on the bourse to allow this new offer, is lower than the effective IPO price of sh180 from two years ago, consistent dividend payments, thrice a year have more than made up for that slight dip in price fortunes.

This time around the sentiment in the economy is markedly improved and MTN CEO Sylvia Mulinge is confident that a repeat of the IPO debacle will not happen this time around.

“We have been transparent about our progression of growth since we listed and we are confident we will get some real engagement. The appetite is there,” she told a news conference last week.

The company has thrown in a sweetener, with every 140 shares bought, buyers will be entitled to an additional 30 shares. With the share selling at its market price of sh170, the effective price of the shares on offer is then sh140, an 18 percent discount.

"In theory if trading reopens at sh170 every shareholder will see an immediate sh30 a share gain...

As if that is not enough all shareholders will be eligible for the sh6.4 per share dividend that will be paid out on 25^th June.

As a short term play the benefits are obvious.

For the investors, who intend to hold the share for the long haul, they too will not be left out.

The company last year paid a total dividend of sh18 a share, a 13 percent return on their money, better than the average fixed deposit rates in this town and higher than the yield on the 364-day treasury bill, which at last week’s auction was 11.926 percent.   

The final dividend for 2023 is a 13 percent improvement from the previous year’s dividend of sh15.9 a share and expectations are that this trend will continue.

While the share price has barely moved over the last 12 months, growing three percent, investment experts are confident that this is a temporary situation.

"They base their thinking on – among other things, on the company’s continued growth in profitability, averaging about 16 percent over the last five years, a figure they say was affected by the Covid pandemic. Last year net profit grew 21 percent....

They expect this to continue with the increasing subscriptions to the network – in May the company logged its 20 millionth subscriber and recorded a growing up take of data services – subscriber numbers jumped 22 percent to 8.2 million.

While mobile money has been growing by leaps and bounds – subscribers were up 10 percent to 12.1 million in 2023 and transaction volume had jumped to sh133trillion from sh92.3trillion the previous year, in 2025 it is set to be spun off from the telecom.

“MTN Uganda intends that all existing shareholders will continue to benefit from the company’s financial technology and infrastructure businesses, whether in the form of listed or unlisted interests and irrespective of any potential restructuring that may be undertaken,” a company statement.

The growing importance of the mobile money arms of the telecos, splitting the entities was part of the renewal of the contract.

"MTN Mobile money had sh1.5trillion in deposits, which would have made it the eighth largest financial institution in Uganda by customer deposits.  Deposits grew 23 percent to sh1.5trilion from sh1.2trillion in 2022, assuming this rate of growth is maintained MTN’s mobile money army would have matched Stanbic bank’s current sh6.3trillion in deposits by 2030...

Whichever way the restructuring goes existing shareholders stand to gain.

With millions of Ugandans yet to acquire mobile phones or log onto the internet or access mobile money services, MTN with its lead in market share in all segments has to be given serious consideration by investors.

ELECTRICITY AS AN EXPORT? WHO WOULD HAVE THOUGHT

That year we were the brightest of the brightest. The instructors set us a quiz to determine our knowledge of country.

The one question I will never forget was “What are Uganda’s cash crops?” Chicken feed for the 1,000 of us seated on the floor of the grass thatched classroom. Coffee, tea, cotton. What about maize, they asked. And cassava? And beans? Aren’t they cash crops?

Credit to us, we all fell silent as we let these new “facts” register, rather than protest and make bigger fools of ourselves.

All our school lives, 13 years up to that point, we had parroted in exam after exam, coffee, tea and cotton as Uganda’s cash crops.

Fast forward to 1997. I found myself on the commodities trading floor of HSBC bank In London, where they told me $150b in transactions passed through that room daily, Uganda’s GDP at the time was $6b, and I happened upon a research note that said coffee we would fall below 50 percent of the country’s total exports by the turn of the century.

That was a mind bending proposition, because in that year coffee exports accounted for six in every $10 of our exports, down from 90 percent in 1986.

"In today’s Uganda where coffee exports not only account for 30 percent of export value, but the sale of the aromatic bean has been overtaken by gold exports, that’s not news. It was at the time.

A quarter century later and the brightest of the brightest of our youth are probably due for another mind bending moment.

In April, the Kenyan media reported that their imports of power had hit an all-time high in the first quarter of the year. They imported 408.78 gigawatthours (GWh) up 42 percent from the same period last year. The source of their imports? Uganda and Ethiopia.

Uganda Electricity Transmission Company Ltd (UETCL) reports exports of electricity were back to pre-covid levels at $44m (sh170b) last year, small when seen against total receipts of $5b but significant none the less. Going by the growth trajectory of the last four years this number is set to double by 2028.

We have always exported power to Kenya but with new generation capacity we are exporting more and more, especially now we are a member of the East Africa Power Pool (EAPP), which is connecting power generators to the region so power can be transmitted wherever it is needed in the region.

Trade in electricity within the EAPP has grown six fold to 3400 GWh annually since 2005 when it was begun.

So it makes sense to increase our generation capacity – one study showed we have at least 4000 MW of hydroelectric power potential, but also invest more in the high voltage transmission lines required to evacuate the power.

Currently lines from Gulu-Nebbi-Arua, Kabale-Mirama and Masaka-Mbarara are in the works. As long as our electricity sector is efficient, so as to ensure demand for our power abroad, the enormous power needs locally and regionally would make such investments no brainers.

It will not help that projects, which should ordinarily take six years to develop take more than a decade 

-- see Karuma dam, as these delays are an additional cost that would price us out of the market. We are not big players, seeing by the total trade in power in the region of 3400Gwh versus our exports last year of 485 GWh. Also because the region has surplus of power generation capacity – 90,000 MW versus peak demand of 54,000 MW, it is a buyers’ market, meaning no one will take our power if it is not competitively priced.

Producing for export means we are subjecting ourselves to more exacting standards than we tolerate at home. Our trading partners do not expect frequent power outages, brown outs and power surges. They will probably sue us for such infringements unlike our pliant locals.

 Exporting power should be an exciting thing, if only because it could serve as the new trick question for our pre-university youth, something like “Which of our exports does not go out by road, rail or air?”

 

UGANDA GOVERNMENT WANTS TO SUPPORT YOUR BUSINESS? RUN A MILE

It was a tragic sight. Dozens of orange buses were being towed and trucked out of their long term parking yard at Namboole stadium. In the dead of the night, as if the owners were embarrassed by the failure of their business.

I think it still happens, but I was once bemused by people who move house at night. The explanation for this ranged from, the tenants don’t have time to move in the day as they are at work to you move at night so the thieves don’t see you to many of these tenants were fleeing rent arrears.

The orange buses belong to the Pioneer bus company, which folded for all practical purposes, a decade ago when a year into operations in 2013, Uganda Revenue Authority (URA) came calling for sh8b in import duty that had come due. They were never the same again.

By the promoters own admission, they had kicked off operations ahead of schedule, as a stop gap measure for a strike by Uganda Taxi Operators & Drivers Association (UTODA).  UTODA was facing off with the newly created Kampala Capital City Authority (KCCA), which was insisting that the then powerful association make good on its dues to the city.

Initially they were making cash hand over fist, but as they say you will know who is swimming naked when the tide goes out. Once the taxis got back on the roads after their little tantrum, Pioneer bus could not handle the competition and cracks started to appear.

A cursory look around Kampala on any given day and it would not be hard or long before a mad boda boda rammed into you, to determine that the transport system is need of a major overhaul.

The running of Kampala’s transport system has been left unregulated and to the whims of the taxi drivers and the aforementioned boda-boda operators. Leaving the market to its on devices is a good idea, until it isn’t.

The way the market works is through a series of continuous experiments. Every transaction or business is an experiment whose result is logged somewhere in some ethereal brain. There are more failures than there are successes and these failures are crushed brutally, every year, every month, every day, to make room for the successful experiments.

"Every so often in human history some people, with little or no understanding of how the market or business operates, come along, often empathizing with the losers and proceed to rig the market to guarantee one result or the other – often for their political cronies. It always ends in tears....

The market, like God, shall not be mocked.

Sadly it is not the political cronies who suffer but the tax payer, who shoulders these losses by suffering poor infrastructure, failing social services and rising crime.

Pioneer buses was in trouble from the first passenger it took on. Backed by a group of politically connected promoters, the bus company thought they could lean on government to get the concessions they needed to make the business work.

Unfortunately, the hastily got concessions did not come through jeopardizing the company’s future success and its promoters’ future prosperity (?).

 

The URA raid may have been the promoters’ road to Damascus, but the company’s fate was sealed when a more fundamental concession never came through. This was the institution of bus lanes that would be exclusively used by the company on their routes from Kampala to Bweyogerere and back...

These were important because people intimately familiar with the business, worked out that for the business to make sense at the low fare prices being proposed, each bus had to do at least eight return trips a day on the aforementioned route. The Kampala-Bweyogerere route was a pilot, afterwards other routes were to be added.

Spurred by some romantic story that opportunity only strikes once, the promoters rushed into battle without crossing their ‘t’s and dotting there ‘i’s, which left government room to renege on the deal. And that was that. But you also have to wonder about businessmen who can commit tens of billions of shillings to an enterprise without basic policy in place.

Private capital is one of the most efficient ways of running services, if only because the motives of the owners are aligned with those of the customer, believe it or not. For the business man to make money he has to serve more and more people. The days of price gorging and fat margins are gone and government too can ensure this does not happen by allowing competition. Business works under the sword of final censure, they don’t serve the customer, they die...

Ironic as it sounds, government interests are not always aligned with the customer. Financed by the bottomless pit of tax payer money, governments can throw good money after bad and not feel the pain, especially if these businesses feed their supporters.  

Seeing how business left to its own devices can lead to chaos, at least in initial stages until the stragglers are culled, how can government support business to help it in service delivery?

If nothing else, all government bureaucrats need continuous training to understand how businesses work. This is important to help them design policy to improve the business environment and negotiate effective and sustainable concessions for intending businesses.

It will also help them recognize that without a dynamic, robust business community it will be impossible to deliver service and uplift the living standards of all citizens and therefore guarantee the longevity.

The rest is basic – a national development strategy, burnish corruption, improve the quality of human capital, beef up law enforcement agencies to ensure a level playing field for all actors and facilitate appropriate financing.

As it is now look with a jaundiced eye at any government support for your business.

 

UMEME AND THE IMPORTANCE OF THE RIVER

Last week power distribution company Umeme released its report ahead of its Annual General Meeting (AGM) at the end of this month.

We already know that while Umeme revenues crossed the two trillion shilling mark -- one of only two companies, with telecom company MTN being the other, to ever cross that mark in the history of Uganda, profits were down 92 percent. The plunge in profit was as a result of provisions made ahead of the eventual end of the company’s 20 year concession.

Umeme took over the running of the distribution arm of the former Uganda electricity (UEB), which prior to privatization was split into the distribution, transmission and generation arms.

"At the start of the Umeme concession UEB was generating 180 MW, was losing half that power through technical and commercial losses and barely managed to collect payment for 60 percent of the power billed for, which in 2005 was sh160b...

The major reason UEB was privatized and the sector was liberalized was, to attract new investment into the sector. The government at the time had maxed out on its borrowing limits, revenues were low and yet for the economy, to have a realistic chance of recovering, a more efficient power sector was required yesterday.

I hear some people arguing that the opening up of the power sector has seen foreign interest expropriate millions of dollars during the last 20 years, but they forget to mention that in order to earn those millions of dollars, hundreds of millions of dollars had to be invested in the sector first.

In Umeme’s case the company has invested $832m or about sh3trillion at today’s prices. This investment financed the extension of the grid and has seen Umeme customers grow ten-fold from 200,000 when the concession begun to about two million at the end of last year.

It helps too that generation capacity has jumped similary to 1,847MW, with 700MW of this due to the private sector. It can be argued too that the financing of Karuma and Isimba dams by government would not have been possible if the power tariff had not risen to a point where it made sense for private investment.

Government’s stated reason for winding down the concessions is because the private players are not allowing it to meet its stated aim of selling power at US5cents a unit.

As part of the concession agreements the private investors negotiated a return on investment and for government to pay for power even if it is not consumed, these invariably pushed up the tarriff but was the cost of unlocking the investment needed in the sector.

So government in a bid to force the tariff down have decided to do away with the private players. Which is within its right.

But the situations that led to the unbundling of the UEB – a need for continuous massive investment in the sector still prevail.

"UEB was not unbundled for lack of demand, as the two million customers signed to the grid will attest. UEB was not unbundled because the people running it were incompetent, electrical engineers at least in those days, were the brightest engineers around....

The power sector was privatised primarily because we did not have the funds to invest in it. Has that changed today? No.

The reason there is a cash squeeze in the economy is because we are not collecting enough revenue to finance our budget and the donors who are supposed to carry the deficit seem to be slow or are unwilling to live up to their commitments.

So where will the money come from to continue with the investment program Umeme has been carrying out for the last 20 years?

The naysayers will argue that Umeme is a going concern and therefore should have no problem sourcing more finance for new developments. The ability of Umeme to source new funds was premised among other things, on the credibility of the concession agreement they were working under. Lending to the government will be another story.

And because the investments to the sector are by nature very big, they will increase our debt burden as a country. The same people who have criticized Umeme will be complaining that government is borrowing too much.

As Justice minister Nobert Mao said last week, when people make decisions there are often the stated reason and the real reason. The real reason for not renewing the Umeme concession will be revealed with time.

But in the meantime the importance of the river will not be known until it dries up.

 

TO TAX OR NOT TO TAX, THAT IS THE QUESTION?

The recent Kikuubo strike – Kikuubo because in the suburbs it was barely felt, has put the issue of taxes top of mind in the last few weeks.

When I heard the presentations of the striking shop owners to President Yoweri Museveni, it was clear that the more things change the more things remain the same. It was 1997 all over again d,uring the VAT strike. In very many words the traders were saying please don’t tax us, tax others.

According to National Social Security Fund (NSSF) there are about 11 million in the workforce but only about two million of these contribute to the Fund. And of these less than half or about 800,000 are active members.

These are the tax payers who contribute the highest amount of any single tax head, in all the revenue collected in this country. According to official figures in the six months to January, Pay As You Earn (PAYE) accounted for sh2.7trillion of the sh15.5trillion in revenues collected during the period. The second highest collections were registered in VAT, sh2.6trillion.

"Workers of Uganda paid more than twice in taxes than all the companies paid on their profits – sh1.1trillion.

Is there any wonder there was little sympathy for Kikuubo from from this country’s major tax payers – the workers in formal employment?

Nobody wants to pay taxes and so it was no surprise that some argue that if government put their taxes to better use they would be more willing to pay. Recent revelations of wastage and corruption in public offices helped to further this argument.

While government has made questionable decisions on public expenditure, the fact that too few of us are paying taxes means there is only so much government can do. Also because we are a “democracy” government is running around trying to appease every constituency, in the process doing too little of everything and not enough on anything.

As an example with a planned budget of Sh60 trillion and a population of about 50 million that means government has earmarked sh1.2m per Ugandan. And even then they are stretching, because URA is expected to collect about a half of that with the rest coming from donors.

So this sh1.2m per Ugandan is going to cater for security, infrastructure development, education, health and any number of the hundreds of programs budgeted for.

If you have not realized it already, we are dealing with pitiful sums before you factor in corruption and government running around like a headless chicken appeasing the latest loudmouth of the month.

How do our neighbours and others further afield measure up?

In Kenya with a budget of sh104trillion each citizen’s share of the budget is about sh2m. In South Africa each citizen’s share is sh7.35m, even with their gross inequalities. A more equitable society, Denmark budgets sh9.5m for each of its citizens.

But if you drill down into the nitty gritty of our budget, government has earmarked sh4.5trillion for education, sports and skills or about sh90,000 per Ugandan. For arguments sake let us say there are about 12 million students – 10  million in primary and secondary and the rest in tertiary institutions, who  will benefit from this money, it still comes to sh375,000.  This includes teacher’s salaries and funds for building new classrooms, labs and stadiums.

"In health where there is less guess work, sh4.2trillion are the funds available or sh84,000 per Ugandan!

There is no justification for corruption and even less so in a country with such meagre resources. Corruption in our case is beyond criminal.

While we might harangue government about how it is being wasteful, it is arguable that with even the best intentions, they still wouldn’t be able to do much. But it is also arguable that, if they did the best they could with what they had, we would all feel as if the challenges are shared pain. As it is now when we see public officials living a lifestyle way above their known incomes, the rest of us begin to believe that we are in this alone and that services are inadequate because of our greedy public servants.

It is is not a difficult argument to make that those of us who are paying taxes, there is very little scope if any, for introducing new taxes, however there are a whole multitude out there who are not carrying their weight, that URA needs to ferret out.

Hence the case for widening the tax base rather than squeezing even more, from those who are already paying taxes.

My two cents of how this can be done? Tax all the land and reintroduce graduated tax...

The former will force us all to put our lands to better use or lease/ sell them to those who can. With one sweep, we would increase tax collections and increase national productivity.

The critics of graduated tax complain that it is too costly to collect, we would not be reintroducing it to raise revenues but to ensure all those ludo and pool playing youth in our trading centers can go out and find more meaningful employment.

Donors holding out on their pledges of aid, should be a reminder that we need to make hay while the sun shines. Because we will not always agree with our donor friends, they will be forever tempted to drag us back in line by turning off the taps and force our compliance.

"Any independent nation worth its salt should be working day and night to get out from under the donor’s boot...

 

POST BANK MAKING BELIEVERS OF US

The banking industry’s annual reports are coming in fast and furious ahead of the month end deadline.

In general the industry seems to be doing what it does best, making money and growing from strength to strength. The capital requirement increase – banks were required to increase their minimum capital to sh150b from the previous sh25b, has not worked itself into the bottom line yet, but we can expect that the effects of this will begin to show up in this year’s results.

Among the eye watering returns of the big players, one small player (is it small anymore?) is quietly but determinedly gaining ground on the big boys.

When critics of the banking industry start complaining how the industry is dominated by foreign capital and how there are no major local players, they either forget or unaware that Housing Finance Bank and Post Bank are local banks.

Post Bank is wholly owned by government and only begun operating as a Tier I bank in 2022.

Last year Post Bank reported a net profit of sh27.5b an 82 percent jump from the previous year’s sh15.2b. this came on the back of a 30 percent rise in income largely due to the loan book growing by a third. Growth in expenses did not keep up with income allowing the bank to report a 68 percent leap in operating profits.

It helps too that while high bad debtor provision have fallen to 24 percent of the loan book compared to 119 percent in 2020. Bad debts are the bane of the banking industry’s existence, a lack of discipline in this one area can and has led to collapses in the banking industry in our lifetime.

And to show last year’s result was no fluke, over the last five years the bank has shown double digit growth in total income, net profit and size of loan book. This last segment has contributed to the bank crossing the one trillion shilling mark in assets for the first time last year.

Last year the bank launched its online wallet Wendi, which will and is already easing government’s disbursement of Parish Development Model (PDM) funds beyond the use of its 58 branches.

The bank has proven efficient with the funds it superintends over reporting a return on Assets of 2.6 percent versus the industry average of 2.2 percent. While share holders will be glad to know the Return on Equity last year was 16.8 percent. While this is lower than the industry average of 20 percent it has been growing at compounded average range of about 15 percent over the last five years.

The point is that assuming Post Bank can maintain its momentum and discipline it can become a very significant player in the economy not only because of its size but because of its reach into the rural areas...

Discipline is key as their cost to income ratio of 83 percent  way higher than the industry average of 68 percent or market leader Stanbic’s which hovers around 50 percent.

Interestingly the bank which was hived off from the old Post & Telecommunications Corporation—the other companies are Uganda Telecom and the Post Office, is the only one of the trio showing not only a return but potential growth.

What does it take to run a state owned bank properly? Post Bank, the only wholly owned government Tier I  bank,  maybe showing that it can be done. It helps that in Chairman Andrew Owiny and CEO Julius Kakeeto, who took over four years ago, they have leaders with strong private sector experience.

It also probably helps that government’s objectives of increasing financial inclusion across the country ties in very well with Post Bank’s drive for profitability and long term sustainability.

This column has been consistently opposed to government being in business, not out of some capitalist dogma but because government’s main objective – anywhere in the world, is to hang on to power. It does this by doling out patronage, which often does not tie in very well with company’s efforts at long term sustainability.

"Government backed companies, the world over fail or at least fail to efficiently deliver goods and services, because when the desire for regime survival comes up against the profit motive, the latter often loses out...

It is still early days by any measure to bring out the champagne for Post Bank but initial indications are promising.

Opportunities abound especially if the bank can roll out its Wendi online solution, which with its 58 branch network and hundreds of banking agents, could provide the necessary synergies for the bank to climb to the next level in the industry.