Nairobi, Sept. 17 — Bank of Baroda’s Kenyan unit is facing the prospect of having its movable property attached and auctioned after the High Court’s Commercial Division authorised a warrant to recover nearly Sh3 billion owed to a private developer.
The warrant, issued in relation to a commercial case filed in 2024, directs court-appointed auctioneers to attach sufficient assets belonging to the bank to cover a decretal sum of about Sh2.996 billion, plus associated costs, owed to Infinity Industrial Park Limited. The underlying judgment was handed down in September last year, but enforcement has evidently dragged on, prompting the latest court intervention.
Under the terms of the warrant, the appointed auctioneers must issue the bank a mandatory 15-day public notice before any sale can proceed, giving Bank of Baroda a narrow window to settle the debt or reach another arrangement with Infinity Industrial Park before its property goes under the hammer. The auctioneers have been directed to report back to court by mid-October on the status of the execution process.
Neither Bank of Baroda nor representatives of Infinity Industrial Park had issued public comment by the time of publication, and it remains unclear which specific assets the bank risks losing should the attachment proceed to auction. Commercial disputes of this scale often see banks move quickly to settle once a warrant has been issued, given the reputational risk of having assets publicly auctioned.
The case adds to a run of high-value commercial disputes working their way through Kenya’s courts this year, several involving banks and large property developers wrangling over long-standing debts and contractual disagreements. For Bank of Baroda, a subsidiary of the Indian banking group with a long-established presence in the Kenyan market, the coming weeks will test whether the matter can be resolved quietly or whether it becomes a more public test of the bank’s finances.
Analysts tracking Kenya’s banking sector say enforcement actions of this nature, while not unusual in high-value commercial litigation, can still unsettle depositors and investors if not addressed promptly. Attention now turns to whether the two sides reach a settlement within the notice period, or whether the coming month brings a rare public auction of a major bank’s property.