CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 BACK GROUND OF THE STUDY
Banks play crucial roles in the process of economic development. By mobilizing funds from the surplus spending units into the economy and by on-lending such funds to the deficit spending units for investment, banks increase in the process. The quantum of national savings and investments through an appropriate investment multiplier, the volume of goods and services produced in an economy increases overtimes as a result of the investment projects embarked upon through banks funds. Also through banks direct and indirect contributions towards the growth of the national economy, they (banks) succeed in promoting an effective payment system, and in creating banking habits and in developing the society at large.
I intend to look at the possible reasons for bank distress and the effect of such failures on the rest of us before working at “the Role of Accountant in managing and liquidating distress banks’.A various times over the past five years of the structural adjustment programme (SAP) the banking industry had to cope with different types and forms of difficulties, all in a bid to record and sustain what one call impressive performance.We have for instance been at different times, the removal and late re-introduction of calling on interest rate.
The seemingly notorious and dreaded stabilization securities have also become one sources of treasury management policy detainment that banks have learnt to live with.The term “Distress’ means great pain, discomfort or sorrow sufferings caused by want of money or mismanagement of money by bank officials which as we know is a complete rotation of the trust reposes in them by innocent investors.
The role of accountant in managing and liquidating a distress banks are being valued by expert values. The accountant has to be fully involved in appointing an expert liquidator who would then sell the assets and liabilities of the distressed bank by means of auction to the general public.In this case, it is not only that the property of the bank is being liquidated but also, the property of the debtors of the distressed bank. The liquidator has to fall back on the assets which the debtors of the bank used as their collateral when borrowing money from the bank.
The money being recovered from the proceed should be used to settle the creditors of the distressed banks. This so because the bank has been termed “DISTRESS” by the result of its inability to meet – up with the stipulated guidelines of having low capital and non-marketable assets base.