Statutorily, banks have upto march 31 of any year to release their prior year's full financials and publish them in the national dailies. Knowing the Kenyan peculiar habit of waiting till last minute, I expect most will release their results from mid March, with the laggards slyly preferring to publish theirs on odd dates and in papers with limited circulation (say on sunday in a paper like kenya times)to ensure as much of their underperformance as possible is swept under the carpet.

But the financial counter is invariably a good bet. Ponder that Kenyan banks were fairly well-insulated from the ravages of the financial crisis of 2008, so that while old and established Banks in the west were collapsing like dominoes, Kenyan banks were expanding and actually opening new branches at the time.
KCB is expanding, and although its new branches initially are cost centres churning out lots of red ink, overall the bank will be stronger in assets & liabilities once these branches start contributing to its balance sheet (say from 12 months from inception). So long term, kcb maybe good. Let's await the financials so that we get a comprehensive analysis of the sector and see where KCB falls. Or when its peers (Equity,StanChart, Barclays) release their results we can compare.

@VVS - KCB made a KShs 40m loan to KPCU in 1992. This has balloned to KShs 643m by 2010.

more details on
http://standardmedia.co....0000198&cid=159&

dude..634million! that cash can be used to set up a subsidiary! kcb has way too many skeletons in the closet...way too many...

relax guys, this amount must have been written off zamani from the books of the Bank, or at the very least is fully provided for.
Note even when a bank writes off a bad debt from its books it still rigorously pursues its monies (plus interest) until recovery is made. Such recoveries are then treated as income write back.

A bank cannot wait till the bad debt is this colossal to now just write off, the provisioning proper starts much early (nowadays as early as 30 days loan overdue when ur loan is classified 'WATCH'. By the time its a bad debt, its fully 100% provided for. But litigation still continues in courts to recover its monies.

Another thing, what KCB is really pursuing in this case is actually its interest (kawaida+penalty) income - newspaper article says they recovered about KShs 1.5b from KPCU already which is way above the principal amt of 40m borrowed. The amt is huge coz remember this was the time of Goldenberg and bank interest rates were > 50% high high in the stratosphere. U can imagine therefore if u were also being charged penalty interest as well on a principal of hundreds of millions...utaitana.