Ghanaian Tycoon Paa Kwesi Nduom says GN Savings will reopen first in Elmina

Paa Kwesi Nduom is not waiting. Six days after the Bank of Ghana filed a Supreme Court appeal challenging the Court of Appeal's unanimous ruling that restored GN Savings and Loans' operating licence, the Groupe Nduom chairman addressed a press briefing in Accra on May 29 and made his position clear: the company is pressing ahead with reopening preparations and will not be pausing for a legal process it did not initiate.

"Until someone gives us a superior order, we are not moving," he said. The Court of Appeal's May 21 directive remains the only binding order before him, and Groupe Nduom intends to comply with it fully.

The first branch to reopen will be in Elmina, a historic trading town in the Central Region of Ghana where Nduom's connections run deep. He announced the location at the NDUOM School of Business and Technology's third congregation and fifth matriculation ceremony, telling graduates, traditional leaders and academics that the reopening would be executed in phases rather than all at once. "The first branch we will reopen will be in Elmina, and then from here on, step by step, we will get those branches opened over a period of time, but working with renewed confidence, renewed excellence so that we can be better than we were before," he said.

Behind the measured language is one of the most dramatic reversals in Ghana's post-financial sector cleanup history. GN Savings and Loans was one of 23 savings and loans companies and finance houses whose licences the Bank of Ghana revoked on August 16, 2019, under then-Governor Ernest Addison's administration. The revocation placed the company into receivership and wiped out the savings of thousands of customers, many of them traders, farmers and small business operators in underserved communities who had chosen GN specifically because it served markets the larger commercial banks did not.

Nduom contested the revocation from the beginning. The High Court dismissed his challenge in January 2024, finding that the Bank of Ghana had acted lawfully. On May 21, 2026, a three-member Court of Appeal panel overturned that ruling unanimously, holding that the revocation was unfair and unreasonable, and ordering the receiver to immediately hand back possession, management and control of the company's assets to shareholders.

The Bank of Ghana filed its Supreme Court appeal on May 27, arguing the Court of Appeal erred in law and that the appellants had failed to comply with mandatory procedural requirements in their notice of appeal. The appeal means GN Savings formally remains in receivership while Ghana's highest court determines whether the appellate ruling can stand.

Nduom's infrastructure rehabilitation, restructuring and staffing plans are moving forward regardless. He described rebuilding GN Savings as a national duty rather than merely a commercial recovery. "Our financial institution is not ordinary. It is a necessary ingredient for national economic development," he told journalists. "It's not just a bank. We didn't build ourselves to become the richest or the biggest bank by asset size in this country or anywhere."

GN Savings operated one of the largest branch networks of any savings and loans company in Ghana before its closure, with particular reach in rural and peri-urban communities. The vacuum its closure created, as Nduom described it, left traders and farmers without formal banking services in areas where GN had been the primary financial institution. Rebuilding that network from Elmina outward is the practical expression of the national duty framing he is applying to what is, simultaneously, a personal and commercial vindication.