Nedbank, SA’s fourth biggest bank by assets and which counts the Public Investment Corporation among its top shareholders, expects full-year profits to slide by up to 60% in the year to end-December 2020, largely reflecting the economic fallout of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Exactly a year ago since the first case of Covid-19 was officially detected in SA, the underlying prices are also yet to recover to pre-pandemic levels, though they have rallied significantly since bottoming out in May 2020. “I think everyone has been pleasantly surprised by how resilient the economy has proven to be. Nedbank is sort of unique in the sense that it has a high concentration of commercial property loans. There has been a lot of concern in recent months about the potential reduction in commercial property space and the ability of clients to meet their debt obligations. As it turned out, that did not happen — or we have not seen that happen yet.