Large banks, including those with deep-pocketed multinational parents, were last year forced to seek rescue loans from the Central Bank of Kenya (CBK), pointing to a major liquidity crisis that roiled the financial sector.
Regulatory disclosures by Kenya’s nine top-tier banks show that balances in the year to December jumped nearly three times to Sh126.5 billion as financiers like Absa and Stanbic that earlier avoided the emergency loans rushed to the lender of last resort.
