Nigeria took a step closer to resolving its financial crisis on Monday when Goodluck Jonathan, president, approved the creation of a “bad bank” to soak up some of the estimated $10bn of bad loans that brought the banking system to the brink of collapse last year, the Financial Times reported. Almost a year after Nigeria’s once-booming banking sector was rocked by revelations of reckless lending gone awry, Mr Jonathan backed a public asset management company similar to those employed by Ireland and other crisis-hit rich countries.

Kenyans should use the recently launched credit information sharing system to negotiate favourable terms and lending rates with commercial banks, the financial services sector regulator, the Central Bank of Kenya, has said. The bank fears that the system is beginning to look like an additional weapon in the hands of lenders to tighten the rules for individual and household borrowers to the exclusion of potential benefits.

Uchumi Supermarkets’ 12,0000 owners have agreed to convert the chain’s debts into equity in a bid to win back firm’s trading rights at the Nairobi Stock Exchange, Business Daily Africa reported. Uchumi’s shares were suspended from trading on the stock exchange in 2006 after it closed its stores following an aggressive but failed expansion plan that led to a Sh1.2 billion loss and left the firm reeling in a Sh2 billion debt owed to suppliers, Kenya Commercial Bank and PTA bank. At the time of delisting from the bourse, Uchumi shares were trading at Sh14.50.

Nigerian banks are extremely risky, despite a N620bn bailout of the sector in 2009, a global rating agency, Standard & Poor, has said. “The Nigerian banking system is still highly risky. The ratings we have for the banks are in the single ‘B’ category, it‘s a very very low level compared to most banks in the world,” Mr. John Gibling, Managing Director (financial institutions) at S&P, said in London on Monday, Punch reported.

Plans by the Government to set up a contributory pension scheme for civil servants has stalled, leaving the retirement benefits time bomb that forced the government to push the retirement age to 60 years nearing explosion, Business Daily Africa reported. Treasury officials said the scheme, which was to come into force on Thursday next week, could not take off for lack of an appropriate law to support it. It will now await the outcome of the vote on the Draft Constitution, according to Anne Mugo, the Director of Pensions.

The payroll crisis at City Hall could be deeper than initially thought after it emerged that more than a third of its 12,000 workers are either dead, inexistent or serving on forged papers, Business Daily Africa reported. In the first hint of the findings of a PricewaterhouseCoopers staff audit carried out in February, Town Clerk Philip Kisia said on Thursday there were 4.215 illegal workers who would be cut off from the payroll. The move would save the council some Sh2.5 billion annually, bringing it closure to financial independence.

Revolving funds that were meant to help Kenyan youth and women start businesses are chalking up bad debt, causing fear of a looming liquidity crisis that could also rob them of support from financiers, Business Daily reported. Fund managers said there has been a huge build up of bad debts in the past 12 months forcing them to consider involving the provincial administration in the disbursement of new loans.

Ireland’s new head of financial regulation, Matthew Elderfield, said he planned to address serious corporate governance failures at the financial institutions by limiting the number of directorships that bank board members can hold, The Irish Times reported. Mr Elderfield said he planned to publish proposals shortly that will “set more exacting standards” for the boards of banks and insurers. “Recent history shows that many boards need to raise their game.

Workers at a French timber subsidiary in Gabon held managers hostage in a French-style "bossnapping" to secure their pay demands, both sides said Tuesday, Agence France-Presse reported. The managers, including the new Chinese buyers of the firm, were released on Monday several hours after being held at their plant in the port of the capital Libreville. The dispute took place at the premises of Leroy Gabon and Pogab, which are both subsidiaries of the French plywood company Plysorol, which was placed in receivership last week by a French court.

The cost of borrowing from commercial banks could come down significantly with the launch of an information portal that will allow lenders to assess their customers based on their credit history, Business Daily Africa reported. Beginning July, it will be mandatory for commercial banks to share information on all non performing loans in their books, including defaulters with the Deposit Protection Fund, with licensed credit reference bureaus. Though the system will punish borrowers with dubious credit records, it is also expected to help good customers negotiate better credit terms.