Draft:Ladi Balogun

Ladi Balogun is one of the sons of the founder of First City Monument Bank Late Subomi Balogun. . He is the Group Executive Chairman of FCMB Group Plc since March 20th, 2017 after retiring from his position as a Group Managing Director of FCMB Limited. He is an Harvard Business School MBA holder with previous work experience at Morgan, Grenfell & Co and Citibank.

Early life
Ladi has a Bachelor’s degree in Economics from the University of East Anglia, United Kingdom, and he completed the Havard Business School MBA in the United States of America.

Career
He started his career in 1993 working for an investment bank in the United Kingdom Morgan, Grenfell & Co. He moved to Citibank US where he worked in trade finance for Central and Eastern Europe Middle East, and Africa.

Ladi Balogun served as the Chairman of Tenet Investment Company, an impact investment company focused on wealth creation for smallholder farmers in Nigeria. He has spent the last 20 years at First City Monument Bank, rising to the position of Group Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer. During the years he witnessed the company grow from 200 employees to 10,000 employees, more than 4 million customers, 200 branches, and a banking subsidiary in the United Kingdom. He led the acquisition and integration dynamics of FCMB with four banks over the last 15 years including the establishment of a micro-lending organisation Credit Direct Limited.

Achievements
During Ladi Balogun leadership, FCMB Group reported in 2023 a 108% YoY growth in profit before tax. The holding company through her key member FCMB Limited (NGX: FCMB) recorded a 108% Year-on-Year (YoY) growth in profit before tax (PBT) to N55.1 billion for the nine months ended September 30, 2023, compared to N26.5 billion in the corresponding period of 2022.

Through their lending to the agricultural sector, FCMB Group contributed to food security and import substitution in Nigeria by 18.4 percent to N174bn from N147.4bn for the full year 2022 including the finance for 24,000 rural farmers, and the rehabilitation of 80,000 farming households was supported in the North-East geo-political zone of the country

Ladi Balogun acknowledged at an Annual General Meeting for the 2023 financial year that there will be a focus on technology to drive their business projects:"Our purpose is to foster inclusive and sustainable growth in the communities we serve. We plan to build a supportive ecosystem that connects people, capital and markets in Nigeria and the rest of Africa."