Adaora Umeoji
By Our Reporter
Adaora Umeoji owns 285,096,933 shares in Zenith Bank, worth 35.89 billion naira at Monday’s closing price of 125.9 naira, or about $27.09 million. That is the largest holding of any chief executive in a Nigerian bank they run. The position has gained roughly $6 million since April, when Billionaires.Africa valued it at $21 million, an increase of about 29% in five months, with the shares moving from around 97.60 naira over the same period.
What separates her from her peers is that most Nigerian bank chief executives are managers rather than owners. They hold shares under long-term incentive schemes and share purchase plans, usually in the tens of millions rather than the hundreds of millions, and their pay comes from salary and bonuses. Umeoji built a position that behaves like a founder’s. She is not the founder: Jim Ovia started Zenith in 1990 and remains chairman and largest individual shareholder with 5,801,238,332 shares held through vehicles including Institutional Investors, Lurot Burca, Jovis Nigeria, Veritas Registrars and Quantum Zenith Securities, more than twenty times hers.
She became group managing director and chief executive on June 1, 2024, succeeding Ebenezer Onyeagwu and becoming the first woman to lead the bank, after joining in 1998 as a Youth Corper and rising through the executive ranks.
Her academic record is unusual for a banker: sociology at the University of Jos, two MBAs from Calabar and Lagos, a doctorate in business administration from Apollos University, law degrees, and executive programmes at Harvard, Columbia, Wharton and London Business School. Zenith reported pre-tax profit above 1 trillion naira for 2024 and proposed doubling its 2025 dividend to 10 naira a share, which would give Ovia about 58.01 billion naira and Umeoji roughly 2.85 billion. The bank is among ten Nigerian companies entering FTSE Russell’s frontier index series on Sept. 21.
Source : Billionaire Africa
