Why GTBank, Zenith Outperformed First Bank, UBA

Why GTBank, Zenith Outperformed First Bank, UBA

GTB office

Obinna Chima

The holding company (HoldCo) structure adopted by First Bank of Nigeria Limited and  large number of African subsidiaries owned by the United Bank for Africa Plc (UBA) have been identified as likely factors that made their major competitors -Guaranty Trust Bank Plc (GTBank) and Zenith Bank Plc to record higher earnings in 2012.
While First Bank had adopted a HoldCo structure whereby a non-operating company holds the investments in the bank and each non-core banking operations as subsidiaries, in line with the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) new banking model, UBA got approval to operate as a standalone commercial bank. Therefore, it divested from its non-core banking businesses. But, UBA’s 18 African subsidiaries are still under the commercial bank.

However, GTBank and Zenith Bank are not operating under the HoldCo arrangement and have very fewer subsidiaries outside Nigeria. Specifically, while GTBank has a total of five branches outside the country, Zenith Bank has only three.
For instance, UBA’s profit before tax stood at N52.01 billion as at December 31, 2012, compared with a loss of N26.6 billion in 2011. Similarly, UBA recorded a profit after tax in 2012 of  N54.77 billion as against a loss of N6.80billion the previous year.
Also, First Bank Nigeria Limited’s 2012 financial reports also showed that its profit before tax increased to N86.177 billion, from the N39.166 billion achieved in 2011. Also, the bank’s profit after tax stood at N75.097 billion as at December 2012, as against the N18.637 billion recorded in 2011.

But GTBank’s profit before tax jumped to N103 billion as at December 2012 from N62.080 billion in 2011, its profit after tax also increased to N87.296 billion in 2012, from N51.742 billion.  Similarly, Zenith Bank recorded profit before tax of N102.100 billion in 2012, from N67.440 billion in 2011 as well as profit after tax of N100.68 billion in 2012.
The Renaissance Capital (RenCap), a Lagos-based financial advisory and research firm, in its latest report titled: “Battle of the Banking Giants - Who Delivered Value?” also showed that although overall, all banks showed  improvement in their operational performance in 2012 as against their 2011 full year reports, their underlying earnings drivers varied significantly. It revealed that GTBank had the most favourable mix and hence delivered the highest returns on both a return on assets (RoA) and return on equity (RoE) basis.

“Over the past nine years, GTBank has consistently delivered higher average gross yields on the book at 10.7 per cent versus First Bank at 9.8 per cent and Zenith Bank at 9.7 per cent. We see no immediate reason why this would change – given its market share.
“Compared with full year 2011, GTBank saw the least deterioration with funding costs up 40 basis points versus First Bank up 70 basis points and Zenith Bank up 130 basis points. We are somewhat confused by the greater deterioration in Zenith’s margins given that there was hardly any change in the mix of the deposit book – we would have expected the bank to have fared better,” RenCap explained.

The Chief Financial Officer, UBA, Mr. Ugochukwu Nwaghodoh, recently disclosed plans by the bank to increase the level of income from its African subsidiaries to 40 percent in the next two to three years from 20 per cent last year.
According to him, the bank might open a subsidiary in Angola this year if granted approval by regulators in the country.
“Otherwise we don’t plan any other offshore expansion in the short to medium term,” he had said.

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Google Faces New Federal Antitrust Probe

Google Faces New Federal Antitrust Probe

Reuters

U.S. regulators are in the early stages of an antitrust probe into whether Google Inc, the top player in Web display advertising, breaks antitrust law in how it handles some advertising sales, a source told Reuters on Thursday.

The source said that it was unlikely that the Federal Trade Commission had sent out civil investigative demands in relation to the probe, which would be the sign of a formal and more serious investigation.

The new line of inquiry focuses on tools acquired when Google bought display ad company DoubleClick in 2007; other firms which specialize in helping Web publishers sell ads to put on their websites are complaining to the FTC, the source said.

The firms have accused Google of leveraging some of its most popular DoubleClick products, such as the ad managing system which has an estimated 80 percent of the market, to push websites to use other products, including Ad Exchange where websites swap ads, the source said.

According to a second source familiar with the situation, Google has not been notified of any antitrust investigation so far. Google and the Federal Trade Commission declined comment on the matter, reports Reuters.

The sources did not want to be named in order to protect their business relationships.
The FTC wrapped up an earlier investigation into Google just four months ago, concluding that the search giant had not manipulated its Web search results to hurt rivals.

Google was the number one player in the $15 billion U.S. display ad market in 2012, with a 15.1 percent market share, compared with Facebook Inc's 14.6 percent share, according to industry research firm eMarketer. Google is expected to widen its lead to 20.7 percent of the market in 2014.

Google is currently trying to convince European antitrust investigators to wrap up a separate antitrust probe, and has offered to change some search pages to give more space to rivals in order to satisfy their concerns.

In that case, Google is accused of hiding links to rival shopping, travel and other websites to protect its ad revenues. On April 11, it said it would offer consumers links to three rival sites in some searches and would label its products

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A Proven System On How To Win Lottery 2013

The National Lottery is a UK Based Lottery System that has changed a lot of peoples life ranging from Euro millions to Thunder Ball and this blog helps in giving you the guide on how to be successful in playing the National Lottery Lotto and other Powerful and Multimillion Lotto Games.

How often do you engage in playing any kind of lottery game?
Do you spend your hard earn money every day just at the end of the day to be buying scratch ticket? Or, do you wait until the jackpot has accumulated into millions of dollars? When you play lotto, do you even realize that there is a guide and proven system that has worked for so many people?

That is the Question you should be asking yourself. Do you know what it entails or either what it takes to win lotto? Some people only play lotto, believing that if it is their luck, that they would definitely win, while some people uses a Powerful Predictable System that has been proven wright by thousands of people and on the same contrary, there are those that win lotto regularly. There is a big difference between playing lotto and winning lotto. Although many people think that winning the lottery is based upon luck and chance which is why they always say that lotto is a game of Chance, but they are those who realize that a certain level of skill and expertise is involved when it comes to knowing how to win any type of lotto system. Rather than just waiting for the day of your luck to roll around the corner, it may be worthwhile learning some of the secrets and having some of the guides on how to win lotto.

Learning How to Be successful In Lottery
Odds are , it is likely you are in the number of People that believes that winning big bucks is based on one Luck of a thing only . But yet ,there are numerous individuals who put in lots of time wishing to either learn or become skilled at the systems on which lotto works to win lottery or on the other way to be successful in Lottery, perhaps they strive to formulate their own personal method on how on how exactly they could be at least 90% accurate in winning lotto .

The techniques they use are notably distinct from wishing with regards to your lucky number or searching for a lucky number in a fortune cookie at lunch . No , these are typically positively tested proven systems on how you could exactly win lotto that many of expert lottery players will rely on .

Do these systems on how to win lotto truly work ?
As an alternative to getting worried over it perhaps you should just think about another question like; When was the last time that you really won the lotto? Are you currently still spending huge amount of money on scratch away tickets and lottery tickets generally? , but yet haven’t won anything or something small which came luckily? In that case you still have not won any money ,maybe you ought to think of or even just plug in to a reliable system that will provide you with all of the strategies to know how to win lotto . Furthermore, at this stage, this may barely put together much better end result as you pull off some bucks to pay for some tickets.

You Absolutely Need a master plan
Gain a proven knowledge put-together and stop giving money away into the blowing wind . Formulate a strategy on how to win lotto . This does not propose a personalized strategy that may be based on what number of times that your family dog howls at the moon, the minute it rains on Fridays . No , what this means is carrying out your own analysis and research and constructing together a master plan that is dependent on strong tactics on how to win lotto . Opt-in for the one which happens to have be proven to be successful and one that would help you get the desired result in winning the lotto .

A Researched and Analyzed Strategies
A number of strategies based on how to win lotto have already been researched and are extremely factual . For example , it might just be a matter of discovering about the patterns and formation of how certain numbers drop. Sure , it is pretty much all about luck, however you would like to know your own listing of chosen numbers in key sets and if they were taken into account amongst the list of the winning numbers or merely drop out duds? The thorough analysis of your competition concerning how you could possibly get more tons of money over a period of time is solely based on this proven system. Let other folks do all the researches and homework on how exactly to hit the Jackpot. You might want to at least take into consideration the idea of taking a look at the end results that they will produce at the end of the spin . You could be amazed at the things you discover when considering the System on how exactly the computation is done to get a great match in other to win the lotto . You could discover that the number you have been playing for the last ten years is not a winning number, but Lucky left over if at all it Lucked you down the reel.

Proven System
How you can play the game and know for sure that your winning is accurate, and your budget for the money have already been written down requires a proven system on how exactly to hit the right numbers at the right spin cord computation and the majority of most of the people that active engages in lotto only require this same system. The the very next time that you just put money into a lottery ticket, have a concrete computational master plan. It actually would not seem sensible spending 50 dollars every evening on random numbers, this strategy could be acceptable for entertainment purposes, if you happen to be primarily playing with a few amount of money per night however when you begin to play with hundreds of dollars weekly like the guys with the proven system on the lottery, you really should understand how to win lotto rather than just how to play. Have you at one time been in your local comfortable retail outlet when the big rollers play the lotto? They often play a lot more than 50 bucks at once? Have you ever wondered how that they would put this great deal of money down at one time, assuming they did not actually have a system on how exactly to win? Of course not.
News Source: Yahoo News

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How To Open and Verify Paypal With Blackberry Phone

While going through the business board on nawhobedat.tk Forum today, I stumbled on a thread where a nawhobeder shared a step by step guide on how to own and verify a USA PayPal account yourself here in Nigeria and have decided to share the info with you.

The trick simply involves the use of a Blackberry phone with an active BIS and a USA virtual bank account (VBA).

The Blackberry lets you access the PayPal website using a foreign IP. Hence, no need for a VPN nor a software to change your Nigerian IP. The VBA, on the other hand is needed for PayPal verification. Though, without it, you can still open your unverified PayPal account.

STEPS

==> Visit www.ip2location.com with your default BB browser, to check the IP address of your phone. The country shown there is not going to be Nigeria. It might be United Kingdom. Just take note of the country.

==> Next, is to generate the US address and US phone number needed for opening the PayPal account. You can get that from www.yelp.com or any other yellow pages website. Just copy down the details.

Alternatively, use:

***5 Paradise Rd Las Vegas, NV 89169 USA

City: Las Vega, State : NV , Zip Code:89169, Telephone: (702) 796-****

Replace the asterisks with any number of your choice. You can change your phone number later to a real one, through PayPal can even reach you.

==> Next, is to visit the homepage of USA PayPal via www.paypal.com/us According to the OP of the thread, opening a USA PayPal account with UK IP might make PayPal think you are living in UK but you are a US citizen who wants to open a PayPal account to be linked to your USA bank account.

==> Click on "Sign Up", Choose "Premium" account type, fill in your details including a valid email address, plus the US address and phone number generated earlier and click on "Agree and Create Account" button.

==> A new page should open, click on "Go to my account" link. Then, click on "Confirm email address" link. You will see a space where you can enter your confirmation code.

==> Open your email address with your BB default browser in another tab. Do not use any other browser. (Very Important!). You will see the verification email sent to you by PayPal. Open it and copy out the verification code.

==> Go back to PayPal account and paste/enter the verification code in the space provided. If successful, you will be directed to the next page to provide two secret questions and answers for security. Provide the info and submit.

==> Congrats! You just opened a PayPal account, though unverified. You can use it to send and receive money, though there are some limits on it.

Stage 2, is the PayPal account verification process.

==> You will need a USA virtual bank account (VBA) for this. You need to find a seller online. Anyone that sells a VBA to you will provide you with: A routing number, an account number, Bank name, a USER ID and a password.

==> Once you have your VBA info, go to "My Account" page and click on "Add bank account"
==> Add your US bank details as required in the fields you will see in the next page and click on "continue"
==> Enter the UserID and Password provided to you by the VBA seller and click on "Confirm Instantly". If successful, you will see a "Bank account confirmed" alert displayed on the page.

That's all.

NOTE:

==> The fact that you're verified doesn't mean your account can't be limited. So, don't keep too much money in your account

==> Anything you want to do relating to this PayPal account should be done through your Blackberry default browser.

==> Alert on any transaction you make will be sent to your email. So, you don't always need to login to your account. Only log in there when you want to send money.

I hope this helps.

If you don't know where to buy VBA, email me (jide at ogbongeblog dot com) to get the info of reliable sellers of VBA, VPN plus info of where you can sell and fund your Paypal account. The info is NOT FREE.

I will also give you a secret on what to do in your account to prevent PayPal from limiting you asap + info of where to get REAL USA phone number through which PayPal can reach you should in case, they want to.


Cheers!

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Affiliate Marketing Program On The Internet: How Does It Works?

If you have been googling, "How can I make money online from my website", there is no way you won't have stumbled on the the idea of been an Internet Affiliate Marketer.

There are a huge number of affiliates earning full-time incomes on the internet from affiliate marketing, and a lot of affiliates doing considerably more than that! You too, can.

So, What is Affiliate Marketing?

In a nutshell, it is a practice where you (as an affiliate) get paid for referring sales or customers to an online merchant web site.

You post links, ad banners linking to the merchant site on your website and earn commission for your marketing efforts.

There are at least three actors in an affiliate program transaction:


A: Merchant site = Seller or service provider e.g Jumia Nigeria
B: Affiliate = You
C: Customer = could be your friend, relative, or an unknown person (e.g blog reader)

Why would actor "A" (Merchant Site) Pay me?

"A", the merchant has products to sell and is looking for a cheaper way to market the products instead of using traditional advertising. The merchant decides to partner with you, so you can introduce their products to people that trust you.

Since "C" (customer) is not familiar with "A", "C" is often skeptical of buying any product from an unknown company. "A" is aware of this fact and also knows that "C" trusts you. After all, if your friends receive an email from you, won`t they open it?.

So "A" partners with you, to use your goodwill to introduce their products to "C". No doubt, "C" would show interest in your offers because of your familiarity.

Now, "A" is prepared to pay you commission per transaction with you for referring "C" to their products. "A" generates unique links, ad banners etc for you which you can be using to promote their products.

You decided to give it a try. You register with the merchant affiliate program, grab your unique affiliate links and post them on your blog, Facebook, Twitter etc

When "C" visits the merchant site via your unique affiliate link and purchase the product of "A", "A" pays you your commission which can pile up to a particular amount before "A" sends your payment to you to your PayPal account or in form of check.

That's all.



Over the past few years, affiliate programs have grown enormously in popularity, taking many interesting forms. In my next post, I will share with you, the basic types of affiliate programs.

More so, I will share with you, affiliate programs that I am making money from, how to join affiliate networks, as well as how to acquire affiliates for your internet businesses.


Just make sure you subscribe to this blog if you don't want to miss the affiliate marketing articles.

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Different Types of Affiliate Marketing Programs You Can Earn Money From

In my recent post; Affiliate Marketing Program On The Internet: How Does It Works?; I detailed the meaning of affiliate marketing and explained the roles of the main actors involved in an affiliate program transaction. However, I didn't explain the basic types of affiliate programs. That’s what I’m here to share with you today.

Over the past few years, affiliate programs have grown so much, taking many interesting forms. The most basic affiliate marketing programs, however, falls under two categories:


1. pay-per-click (PPC), and
2. pay-per-performance (PPP).


1. Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Affiliate Program This is the easiest type of affiliate marketing in which affiliates earn money whenever a visitor is referred to a merchant site. The referred visitors don't have to buy anything before the affiliate will get paid and what the visitor does on the merchant site doesn't concern the affiliate.

If you promote a PPC affiliate program, you will get paid a certain amount even if the visitor you refer doesn't buy anything from the merchant's site. What you will earn per click might not be up to a dollar though.


2. Pay-Per-Performance (PPP) Affiliate Program This is the type of affiliate program preferred by majority of merchants because merchants will pay affiliates ONLY when the referred visitors perform an action.

PPP affiliate program can be further classified into two popular types:


* pay-per-sale (PPS)
* pay-per-lead (PPL).

Pay-Per-Sale In this arrangement, affiliates get paid when the visitors referred to merchant's site purchase something. Merchant pay affiliates a percentage of the sale price when the purchase is completed. Amazon.com's affiliate program is an example of PPS affiliate program. Pay-Per-Lead In this program, affiliates get paid once the referred visitors provide their contact information on the merchant's site by filling out a simple form related to the business of the merchant.

The merchant may use the info as a sales lead or sell to another company as a sales lead. PPL is often used by finance companies and other companies who rely on leads for their company to grow.

Aside from these basic types of affiliate marketing, a lot of other affiliate marketing types exist. Just pick one which you think would suit you best. You can also venture into multiple types at the same time to find out which ones are right for you.

You might think it is easy, but in reality, you need to put in a lot of effort at first for affiliate marketing to work. Once you finally know your way through it, your affiliate marketing venture can turn from being an additional source of income on the internet to being your primary financial source.

I hope this helps.

In my next post, I will share with you, how I am making money from affiliate programs in Nigeria, how to join affiliate networks, as well as how to acquire affiliates for your online businesses.

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