Otedola buys N18.9bn shares to regain position as biggest shareholder in FBN Holdings

Billionaire businessman and chairman of FBN Holdings, Femi Otedola, has regained his position as the majority shareholder of First Bank.

According to corporate filings on the Nigerian Exchange Group (NGX) on Thursday, Otedola now owns 9.41 percent shares in the bank.

This became possible after he purchased the group’s shares valued at N18.9 billion.

According to the corporate filings, the billionaire paid N21.91 per share or N6.935 billion for 316,506,776 shares.

He then bought an additional 546,674,034 shares through Calvados Global Services Limited, his holding company, for N21.97 per share — totalling N12.01 billion.

With this, the number of shares recently acquired totalled 863,180,810.

The fresh acquisition has increased Otedola’s shares (direct and indirect) in FBN Holdings to 3,380,462,950 — from 2,517,282,140 shares.

This means the businessman is now the highest shareholder in the company, overtaking Barbican Capital Limited, owned by Oba Otudeko, which has 3,110,400,619 direct shares.

In January, FBN Holdings appointed Otedola as the chairman of its board of directors.

The appointment came two years after the investor became the firm’s single largest shareholder in December 2021, when he increased his stake to 7.57 percent.

A month after the appointment, FBN Holdings named Barbican Capital Limited as its majority shareholder — making Otedola the second major shareholder at the time.