The raise is here; don’t tell your coworkers

Stanbic finally bumps salaries… but it’s a hush-hush affair.

Photo by Sunday Abegunde on Unsplash

“Who first buy car na him dey drive old model,” is one of those cheeky pidgin proverbs that sits right beside Aesop’s “sour grapes.” The idea, if you haven’t already parsed it, is simple: don’t envy people who get nice things before you. By the time you’re ready, their shiny toys won’t be so shiny anymore.

Crypto gamblers enthusiasts call it copium.

I imagine that’s exactly what Stanbic IBTC staff were on for months, watching other banks dish out salary increases while they sat by their windows, waiting for something, anything, to happen.

If you somehow live under a rock, the FUGAZ banks (First Bank, UBA, GTCO, Access, and Zenith) have all bumped salaries in the past year, returning banks to the top of the “salary attractiveness” pile, second only to politicians oil and gas workers.

Save for a blip in 2021/2022 when startups were flush with VC money and outbidding everyone for talent, banks—who collectively employ over 95,000 people—have generally been the clearest salary benchmark in Nigeria.

Anyway, back to Stanbic: it’s finally made a move, delivering a 30–35% salary increase, according to four people with knowledge of the raise. But like other banks, Stanbic reinforced the code of silence; employees were reportedly warned not to disclose salaries even to their colleagues (my sources have coconut heads).

One bank even sent employees internal communication warning them that talking to the media about their salaries is a sackable offence. Weird, when you consider that the banks are generally big enough to ignore some kind of media coverage.

Anyway, if you know anyone at Stanbic, bill them. They have money now.

Enough said about the banks. Let’s track back a bit.

A few hours after I hit send on Friday’s newsletter about Flutterwave’s IPO dance, Klarna the Swedish fintech and BNPL darling (its IPO was supposed to encourage other fintechs) hit pause on its U.S. IPO.

The reason? Trump’s tariffs.

Global markets went into a tailspin after Donald Trump announced “reciprocal” tariffs for America’s trading partners using some very funky mathematics. It sent IPO hopefuls back into their caves, with Klarna now rethinking its plans despite filing just weeks earlier in March.

“This kind of market instability naturally makes any company, regardless of sector, hit the brakes on near-term IPO plans,” one analyst told Reuters.

Things happen quickly so fingers crossed (even though Flutterwave is putting profitability talks first).

Also on Friday…I talked briefly about the African Discount, the idea that global investors assign lower valuations to African startups simply because… well, they’re African.

Turns out it’s not just startups. In a Financial Times piece on Sunday, Seplat’s CEO said:

“We’ve got a big discount on our share price for the Nigeria [factor]… The only way to pierce that perception is just . . . keep growing production and keep talking about it.”

It’s rough out here.

Meanwhile, GTCO will raise a further ₦180 billion to meet recapitalization requirements. The bank already raised ₦209 billion in a rights offer, powered by an inescapable “slice of orange” campaign. One day before the offer closed, I was getting six SMSs per day asking me to buy shares.

With ₦1.03 Trillion in FY 2024 profits and a share price of nearly ₦70, I cannot imagine it’ll have a hard time raising money.

See you on Friday!