dfcu Group bid for UCBL good, MPs told

By Joyce NamutebiTHE dfcu Group bid for Uganda Commercial Bank Limited (UCBL) was good, a senior Group official yesterday told the parliamentary committee probing the sale of UCBL.Willie Ogule, the dfcu Group general manager, legal services and Group secretary, yesterday said dfcu offered US$50m (sh86.7b) for UCBL.He said dfcu had a perception that the consultant engaged by the Bank of Uganda (BOU) on UCBL, Wendy Apt, was over dominating and did not communicate its bid to BOU properly.the director representing Commonwealth Development Corporation (CDC) in dfcu, Peter Hinton, told the committee in a separate interview that they were disappointed that they lost the bid for UCBL.Hinton had earlier on told the MPs that they were not happy with the technical team on UCBL. “We communicated to the BOU Governor when we found out that our bids were not being communicated,” he said. The two officers denied that dfcu would make all employees of UCBL redundant if it bought the bank. Ogule said a mechanism should be worked out on the payment of the sh72b which the government owed to UCBL by the time of selling the bank. “The most significant component of the bank is the sh72b,” he said.Ogule said the dfcu board and the shareholders were convinced that they presented a professional bid.Ends