Access Bank Plc and its stock trading subsidiary United Securities Limited are the principal defendants in a breach of contract suit brought before a federal high court in Lagos by an aggrieved chartered accountant Dr Patrick Ayo Akinyelure.
The accountant who is a longtime customer of the bank is alleging a cumulative liability by Access Bank and United Securities to the tune of ₦100 million in the case which has been adjourned to January 20, 2019 for settlement or further hearing.
The plaintiff had sometime in January 2008 applied for a margin loan facility to the tune of ₦30 million from Access Bank for the purpose of carrying out profitable trade in stocks on the floor of the stock exchange.
The loan was backed by proper collateral and all terms and conditions were fully complied with. Interest on the facility was fixed at 20% per annum.
The plaintiff maintains that around the time when the loan was being facilitated, officials of Access Bank openly and covertly coerced him to use the bank’s subsidiary United Securities Limited as his share portfolio managers. Whereupon the loan amount was transfered to that company for the purpose acquisition of shares for investment in his name.
The plaintiff averred that sometime in May 2008 he received a letter from Access Bank intimating him of an upward review of the loan interest from 20% p.a to 25% p.a. The action, he said, was taken unilaterally and in breach of contract and against extant monetary policy regulating applicable interest rates.
The plaintiff claimed that sever letters to the bank demanding a reversal of the new interest rate fell on deaf ears as the bank continued to maintain the new rates it unilaterally and illegally fixed.
Using the new rate if 25% p.a, the bank by letter dated 22nd July, 2009, wrote him letter demanding immediate payment sum of ¥41,119,208.19 being purported amount outstanding on his account within 14days failure of which the bank threatened to embark on steps to recover its funds in a manner inimical to him.
Furthermore, the plaintiff maintains, his investment portfolio was recklessly mismanaged by United Securities, leading to deprecation in the value of the shares invested in, and huge accumulation of the purported interest on the loan.
Mr Akinyelure is therefore praying the court to declare that the defendants breached the terms of the loan facility agreement, that he is not indebted to them in any way, and that he is entitled to ₦100 million from the defendants for losses sustained as a result of their breach of the share loan facility agreement