Kenya Commercial Bank

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Kenya Commercial Bank is a Financial Services Provider headquartered in Nairobi, Kenya.

It is among the largest three largest banks in Kenya. The other two are Barclays Bank of Kenya and Standard Chartered Bank of Kenya.

The government of Kenya, through the Treasury (under the Ministry of Finance), owns 26% but intends to offload its shares to the public in 2006.

CEO Terry Davidson replaced Gareth George.

KCB went through an extremely difficult period when Alexander Kaminchia was the Executive Chairman. Even though KCB made "super-profits", it turned out that the loans made to ill-advised ventures, politically connected individuals and companies were actually non-performing thus were written down by the new management in subsequent years.

The provisioning & write-downs of these loans severely affected KCB's capital base thus in 2004, KCB had a successful Rights Issue to bolster its capital to meet the Central Bank of Kenya's requirements.

It is quoted on the Nairobi Stock Exchange and until 2004 historically underperformed most other publicly listed banks. The exception being National Bank of Kenya which was plundered during the Executive Chairmanship of John Simba.

[edit] PRESENT

KCB has a Tanzanian subsiduary with branches in Dar Es Salaam, Arusha and Mwanza. In 2006 KCB opened two branches in Southern Sudan, one in Juba and a second in Rumbek. Following record profits in 2006, in early 2007 the company announced plans to expand their regional presence into Uganda and Rwanda.