The board of directors of
Fidelity Bank Plc last Monday met to approve a successor to the incumbent
managing director & chief executive officer, Reginald Ihejiahi, who will
serve out his 10-year maximum term by February 2014.
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| Okonkwo, CEO designate |
He is Nnamdi Okonkwo, who is
currently an executive director in charge of the South directorate of the bank.
Okonkwo holds a Bachelor of
Science degree in agric economics from the University of Benin and an MBA in
banking & finance from Enugu State University. He is also a graduate of the
Advanced Management Programme of INSEAD Business School, Fontainebleau, France.
In addition, he has attended various business and management training locally
and overseas, including Harvard Business School, Oxford, etc.
A statement from the bank
said Okonkwo comes with over 23 years of experience in various aspects of
banking. Between 2006 and 2009, he was managing director of United Bank for
Africa (UBA), Ghana, and between 2008 and 2009, he doubled as the regional
chief executive officer for UBA West African Monetary Zone, with responsibility
for Ghana, Liberia and Sierra Leone.
He later became divisional
head for the corporate bank directorate between 2009 and 2012, before coming
back to Fidelity Bank Plc, as executive director, having earlier worked in
Fidelity Bank (old FSB that consolidated to form the enlarged Fidelity) between
1998 and 2000. In that period he had been senior manager in branches both in
Lagos and Port Harcourt.
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| Ihejiahi, outgoing CEO |
Between 2004 and 2005,
Okonkwo had been general manager in Standard Trust (which later became UBA) and
later in 2005 was regional director of UBA in charge of branches in the FCT,
Niger and Kogi states.
This is the third CEO of
Fidelity Bank after 25 years of operation, making it one of the banks with the
most stable management in the industry.
Following the policy of the
Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) which stipulated a maximum term of 10 years for
bank CEOs, the current CEO, Reginald Ihejiahi, who assumed duties in early 2004
will have served out his term in February 2014.
Ihejiahi took over Fidelity
Bank Plc and inherited the challenge of setting the course for growth. From
being in the top 30 banks in Nigeria with N20 billion in deposits, N30 billion
in total assets and less than 150,000 in customers, he orchestrated the
consolidation of the legacy Fidelity Bank with the former FSB International
Bank Plc and Manny Bank Plc to form the currently enlarged Fidelity Bank Plc
that now ranks among the top 10 banks in Nigeria with over $1.0 billion in equity,
over N1 trillion in total assets and 2.3 million customers represented in 220
branches compared to 17 branches at take on, with presence in all the state
capitals and major commercial centres in Nigeria. Fidelity is today the 6th
largest bank in Nigeria, by shareholders’ funds, and one of the few companies
that has consistently paid dividends, without fail, in the last eight years.
Ihejiahi and his team also led some of the landmark international financial
transactions in the industry including the issue of Global Deposit Receipts
(GDR) in 2007 and the $300 million debut issue of internationally traded
Eurobond in 2013.
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