NAIROBI, November 29, 2025
Credit Bank has just fired the financial equivalent of a distress flare across Nairobi’s money markets: cough up Sh4.5 billion before the tinsel goes up, or the Central Bank of Kenya will switch off the lights for good on December 31.
In a notice that landed like a thunderbolt on the Nairobi Securities Exchange this morning, the tier-3 lender has summoned every single shareholder to a make-or-break virtual emergency meeting on December 19.
The mission is brutally simple. Existing owners, led by the powerful Nyachae family, must stuff 45 million brand-new shares down their own throats at KES 100 each in a private placement that reeks of panic.
That cash is the only thing standing between Credit Bank and a humiliating demotion to microfinance status when the clock strikes midnight on New Year’s Eve.
This is not a polite rights issue. This is a hostage video from the boardroom.
The bank is already Sh1.72 billion short of the CBK’s new Sh3 billion minimum core capital rule, part of a sector-wide bloodbath that has eleven lenders scrambling for a combined Sh14.7 billion lifeline.
Miss the deadline and Governor Kamau Thugge has promised the regulator will swing the axe without mercy: licences revoked, branches crippled, reputations shredded.
If the Nyachaes and the old guard choke on the size of the cheque, the board has two desperate escape hatches ready to ram through the same meeting.
One: swap a prime slice of Upper Hill land worth Sh1.2 billion for 12 million new shares handed to a little-known outfit called Shangri-La Villas.
Two: float a Sh1.5 billion convertible note paying 6% that can be flipped into ordinary shares whenever the directors snap their fingers. It’s the kind of financial witchcraft banks only attempt when the undertaker is already measuring them for a coffin.
Customers are already voting with their feet. Lending rates still stuck above 19% while deposit rates limp along at 7.63% have turned Credit Bank into a pariah.
Bad loans across the sector are kissing 14%, depositors are fleeing anything that smells weak, and every day brings fresh whispers of which mid-tier name will be the first to fall.
December 19 is now judgement day. If the inner circle writes the mother of all cheques, Credit Bank staggers into 2026 bruised but breathing.
If they blink, balk, or simply run dry, one of Kenya’s oldest home-grown banks becomes the first big scalp in the great capital purge of 2025.
The message from the corner office could not be clearer: pay up by Christmas, or prepare for the funeral in January.
There's no story that cannot be told. We cover the stories that others don't want to be told, we bring you all the news you need. If you have tips, exposes or any story you need to be told bluntly and all queries write to us [email protected] also find us on Telegram
