FINANCIAL LEVERAGE AND PROFITABILITY OF UBA BANK PLC.

ABSTRACT The purpose of the study was to examine the effect of financial leverage and profitability of UBA Bank Plc. It made use of secondary data from audited financial statements of listed UBA banks at Nigerian Stock Group (NSG) since 2014 to 2023. Descriptive statistics was used as a tool to determine the bank’s profitability and debt statuses while the relationship between dependent variables measured by Return on Average Asset (ROA) and Return on Average Equity (ROE) with independent variable measured by Debt Ratio (DR) was determined by regression analysis. The study found that the commercial banks are firms with large debt averaging 89.9%, 87.7% and 80.2% for UBA Plc. respectively. Furthermore the profitability measured in terms of ROA for UBA Plc are 3.7%, 5.1% and 3.7% respectively while that which is measured in terms of ROE are 25.4%, 29.6% and 14.5% respectively as mean values. It was also found out that change of debt amount in the capital structure has a negative effect on return on average asset explained by 33% and a non-effect on return on average equity. The study recommended that through central bank of Nigeria, proper regulations and policies must be set to allow the circulation of money at individual level rather than as it is now that much money is owned by business and few individuals not the community at large. Minimize operating and employees benefit expenses by employing telecommunication technology in all financial transaction like deposit taking, and cash draws