The Secret To Tony Elumelu's Business Success is Family?

Chief Israel Ogbue, one time chairman of UBA recently turned 90. Among guests at the august birthday occasion was billionaire entrepreneur and former Managing Director of UBA Plc Tony Elumelu. Ordinarily this should not be news, except that Chief Ogbue unwittingly revealed a little-known fact. Tony Elumelu is married to his daughter Awele. Prior to his taking over UBA in 2005, Tony Elumelu served as the Managing Director of Standard Trust Bank (STB) which he took over with a body of investors 1997. Mr Ogbue, his father in law also served as Director in STB from 2001, till its merger with UBA in 2005. Tony Elumelu was Managing Director of UBA Plc from 2005 to 2010, when he retired following a CBN policy which stated that bank MDs who had served for a period of ten years should retire. During this period, his Father Inlaw Mr Ogbue served very well as director from 2005 to 2013, when he retired as chairman.

At his final year of retirement, he held about 826,200 directly and 66,812,728 indirectly ordinary shares of the bank, perhaps in part on behalf of his Son Inlaw and his other companies. During this period, Mr Elemelu was not a member of the board (due to CBN embargo). By the time Mr Elumelu was back on the board as Chairman a year later, he had shareholdings of about 116,067,153 direct and 1,432,429,576 indirect in the company and not up to the statutory 5% required to be disclosed separately. Of course, that shareholdings has now increased to 189,851,584 direct and 1,883,024,416 indirect by 2015, enough to garner him 5.7% ownership of the company and disclosed separately in the financial statement of the bank. Talking about disclosure, the relationship between Mr Elumelu and his Father In-law is not reported in their audited financial statement. As far as we are concerned, it is not a disclosure requirement in and need not be public.

However, one cannot but admire Mr Elumelu’s appreciation for Family ties in guarding what belongs to him. The family ties have continued with the current MD of UBA Plc, Kennedy Uzoka who coincidentally is a cousin to Tony Elumelu. His brother and politician Mr Peter Elumelu, is also a director in Africa Prudential (formerly UBA Registrars), a company Mr Tony Elumelu also has significant interests in.