A dream business turns into nightmare

There was no room for contesting or negotiating the Sh20 deal. So with a heavy hear, he signed the dotted line after three days of intense pressure.

With that stroke of a pen, Daniel Kamita Gichuhi signed off his mortgage financing business, which he values at Sh85 million then, for a mere 20 bob.

“It hurt. It still it hurts,” he recalls the 1989 transaction where Home Savings and Mortgage Ltd, a mortgage financier he founded with five other partners, was taken over by government and lumped with eight other “weak” financial institutions into an ICU-like operation that formed what we know today as Consolidated Bank of Kenya.

Almost a quarter a century later, he is still waiting for the Sh20 cheque from Treasury in exchange for a business he jointly owned with Mr Jim Kahiu and four other shareholders – Fair Acres Ltd, Nyaruiru Investment, Qciku Investment Ltd and Karume Investment Ltd, which is associated with former Cabinet minister Njenga Karume.

“I would love to get the Sh20 to keep it as a souvenir,” says Mr Gichuhi, who runs property business, Thrift Homes Ltd.

The tribulations of Mr Gichui and many other investors in the nine banks that were dissolved were touched off by the country’s worst financial crisis between 1984 and 1990, which was characterised by the collapse of banking and financial institutions, mostly those owned and managed by indigenous Kenyans.

It all begun, albeit slowly, with the collapse of the late Andrew Ngumba’s Rural Urban Credit Finance Company due to liquidity problems in December 1984 before being placed under receivership a year later, according to a confidential report on the government’s move, Sunset for the people’s banks.”

The holding group of two institutions – Continental Bank and Continental Credit Finance – whose principal shareholders were Mr Philip Wahome and Mr Maina Wabicho, followed in July 1986 when depositors ran on it and it was “kicked out” of the Nairobi inter-bank clearing house by the Central Bank of Kenya.

Fear gripped the banking sector and suddenly some depositors with savings in indigenous banks started withdrawing their money to avoid losing it.

Shortly, it hit the Union Bank of Kenya, which was associated with businessman Jimnah Mbaru, and its affiliates, Jimba Credit Corporation and Kenya Savings and Mortgages.

“The most devastating impact was caused by the withdrawal of all government deposits from these institutions following a directive by the government that all deposits of public institutions be moved out to the ‘more secure’ state banks,” says the report.

The traumatic experience Mr Gichuhi underwent is clear because he only opened up to an interview after weeks of pestering to speak on the events that peaked on December 7, 1989, with the birth of Consolidated Bank, State-owned and now planning an initial public offering.

“It was the most trying time for me and my family. It is very painful. I would rather not talk about it,” he says. “I lost everything I had worked for since I left university in 1973.”

Among the consolidated firms were Nationwide Finance Company Ltd, owned by J.P Mwangi, who has gone to court over the matter, and the late Alex Kibaki.

Others are Business Finance Co Ltd and Citizens Building Society whose shareholders include veteran insurer, Godfrey Karuri, former Cabinet minister Maina Wanjigi, Andrew Ligale, William Mbote and Joseph Muchemi.

From proud owners of businesses, their lives were transformed into a daily financial struggles. “I had to look for other means of surviving.

So I went into consultancy,” says Mr Marubu Munyaka, a director of Estate Finance Company of Kenya and Estate Building Society of Kenya, which consolidated while he was in the US studying.

“I have had to pay a lot of money, especially to service my mortgage because I didn’t want my family to be thrown out by auctioneers,” says Mr Gichuhi.

Incidentally, to earn a living, he says, he was asked to work for the new owners of his company for two years. The bank disputes the claim, which is a subject of an ongoing court matter.

“They refused pay me for the work I did and my pension,” says Mr Gichuhi who, armed with a Bachelor of Commerce (accounting) degree, was among the first management trainees taken in by Savings & Loan, which Kenya Commercial Bank was restructuring after acquiring it in 1972.

Parastatals such as the National Social Security Fund, National Hospital Insurance Fund, Kenya Re-Insurance Corporation, East African Portland Cement, Cooperative Bank of Kenya, Kenya National Examination Council and Kenya National Assurance Company took up shareholding in Consolidated Bank .

“It was devastating because we had loans and investments that needed the funds they (parastatals) were demanding,” Mr Gichuhi said.

President Daniel arap Moi appointed a special investment committee under Finance (now Internal Security) minister Prof George Saitoti, to advise on how to raise funds to resuscitate the troubled institutions.

Members of the committee included Philip Ndegwa, then CBK governor, Finance Permanent Secretary Harris Mule, Micah Cheserem, chief accountant East African Industries (now Unilever) and later CBK governor as well as BM Gecaga, chairman, British American Tobacco.

Others were Health minister Peter Nyakiamo, his Planning and National Development counterpart, the late Robert Ouko, and Simeon Nyachae, then chief secretary in the Office of the President.

The committee, working with the chief justice, announced it would establish special courts to specifically deal with recovery of the money owed to the troubled banks and financial institutions.

“But it made no visible attempts to rescue the institutions because what followed eventually was their takeover by Consolidated Bank of Kenya,” says the report.

In an earlier interview carried in Smart Company last week, Consolidated Bank CEO David Wachira said owners of the nine institutions were fully paid though efforts to get Treasury’s to confirm this were fruitless.

“The records we have from the owner of the organisation, that is the government, shows that they were fully compensated,” he said, “But they are entitled to pursue any claims they may be having through the court.”

Reliving the events of that fateful end of 1989, the shareholders say they received three letters in two days: One reminding them that they had not complied with the requirement of a maximum of 25 per cent individual shareholding, the second informing them they were still holding public deposits and the third inviting them into a meeting with the committee.

During the meeting they made efforts to secure friendly ways of rescuing their firms – including inviting new shareholders and injecting new capital – but they were rejected.

One of the officers at the meeting put it bluntly. “Why are you taking them round? Give them the true position,” Mr Gichuhi recalls the officer saying.

It dawned on them that they were fighting a losing battle since they were soon given copies of a sale agreement to sign. They were, however, allowed to sign them later after being allowed to consult their other shareholders and lawyers.

The rest, as they say, is history.

“We lost our investments and pride in society,” says Mr Karuri, who has retired from Gateway Insurance, one of the country’s over 40 insurance companies.

Theirs is a story of Kenyans who joined the banking industry in the 1960s and 70s and, by 1980s, had risen through the ranks thereby gaining experience and knowledge that they felt was enough for them to go it alone.

“We felt that a country with only foreign banks and financial institutions will not say it is independent because these institutions are the blood that drives the economy of a country,” says Mr Gichuhi, “We were not only the most qualified, but also best placed to fill in the gap.”

But the shareholders maintain that the government’s action was more than just economic.

“The expropriation was effected on the simple ground that the original owners belonged to a certain ethnic community, which was perceived not only not to support the government of the day, but also financially supported people in opposition and whose businesses were being distressed by government owned and other banks through political pressure from the powers above,” says Mr Munyaka.

But why didn’t they raise issue for this long?

“We could not talk then for fear of being branded economic saboteurs and taken to the Nyayo House torture chambers,” says Mr Karuri.

They say immediately the President Kibaki-led Narc government came to power in 2003, they sort an amicable solution to the issue but so far nothing has come out of their efforts.

Their plea to the government is: to give them a hearing before carrying out the proposed privatisation of Consolidated bank. “We are not against the privatisation,” says Mr Karuri, “All we want is to be involved as shareholders.”