Herbert Onyewumbu Wigwe. PHOTO | COURTESY
Herbert Onyewumbu Wigwe, the chief executive of Access Holdings, who died aged 57 in a helicopter crash on Friday, February 9, 2024 in California, led Access Holdings through an aggressive expansion, including mergers and acquisitions.
Outside Nigeria, his ventures included Access’s foray into Kenya with the buyout of Moi-linked Transnational Bank (TNB) in 2020.
Access Bank, Nigeria’s top lender by assets, completed the purchase of 99.98 percent stake in Transnational Bank on July 20 from companies owned by close associates of the late president Daniel arap Moi.
With the deal effective February 1, 2020, it eased out TNB’s top shareholders who were extremely powerful men during Moi’s rule between 1978 and 2002, including Joshua Kulei, chief secretary Simeon Nyachae and former Vice- President George Saitoti, the latter who died in a plane crash in 2012.
Kulei, a former warder, served as Moi’s personal secretary, and was one of his most trusted aides.
Firms associated with these top owners reportedly pocketed Sh1.4 billion for their stake in TNB which had come under a cloud following claims of money laundering.
WikiLeaks, a London-based organisation, published a 2007 report in which forensic auditors Kroll Inc linked the bank to Sh31 billion ($200 million) money laundering.
“An estimated $200 million of Abacha money was laundered through Kenya, using Transnational Bank and its Nostro accounts held in Frankfurt and other jurisdictions. This money was parked in off-shore accounts,” the leaked Kroll report said.
Sovereign Trust, a firm associated with Mr Kulei, held 23.03 per cent shareholding in Transnational.
Simbi Investors, linked with Mr Nyachae, a former Cabinet minister during Mr Moi’s administration and now deceased, held 8.2 million shares or 4.11 percent of the bank. Losupuk Ltd, associated with Prof Saitoti, had 2.79 per cent.
Transnational was opened in December 1985 and was strong on agribusiness financing. The new owner, however, wanted to grow the bank, which had 28 outlets around the country when it took over, into new areas such as trade financing, SME lending and corporate banking.
Access also said it was eyeing expansion into the counties which would see it extend its reach to 21 counties. Access management said five of the devolved units — Kisumu, Nyeri, Machakos, Kiambu and Meru — would be given priority, followed by Nyandarua, Kakamega, Bungoma and Kisii.
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So who was Herbert Wigwe, the finance whiz-kid who helped transform an obscure bank into Nigeria’s biggest lender and an African giant?
From being the 65th largest bank in Nigeria at the point he and his business partner bought it in 2002, the bank now has assets worth over Sh1.17 trillion.
His death, which happened alongside those of his wife and son, hit the corporate world hard, particularly Access Holdings, which is still reeling from the recent demise of its chairman Bababode Osunkoya after a brief illness.
Wigwe was born in Ibadan in August 1966. His father was a civil servant, while his mother was a nurse. He was married to Chizoba Wigwe (nee Nwuba), a lawyer and entrepreneur. They were reportedly close to their four children: Chizi, Tochi, Hannah, and David.
Although his precise net worth remains undisclosed, reports suggested that the banking tycoon has an estimated net worth of around $65.2 million (Sh9.7 billion).
Wigwe graduated from the University of Nigeria Nsukka with a second-class upper degree in Accounting in 1987. He started as a graduate assistant at Coopers and Lybrand Associates Limited, moving on to chartered accountant in 1989.
In 1991, he completed a Masters in Banking and Finance at North Wales University (now Bangor University) in the United Kingdom. He would later earn a Master of Science degree in Financial Economics from the University of London and become an alumnus of the Harvard Business School Executive Management Programme.
He had quite an exceptional career at Guaranty Trust Bank (GTB), where he became an executive director at just 32.
At GTB, he teamed up with long-time friend and business partner Aigboje Aig-Imoukhuede, also an executive director at the bank at that time, both of whom made a bid to buy fledgling Access Bank in 2002.
Mr Aig-Imoukhuede in his book, Leaving the Tarmac: Buying a Bank in Africa, says of the partnership: “We had become the owners of the bank in March 2002. At that time, I was still only thirty-six years old, but I already had ten years of senior management banking experience at GTB.”
“As it was, I had until 2015 to continue growing the bank and prepare for a smooth transition to Herbert.”
At 36, the highly ambitious bankers were considered too young to acquire a bank by officials of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Mr Aig-Imoukhuede added, noting that the central bank delayed the approval of the takeover on that ground.
When Wigwe took over the reins in 2015, having served as the deputy managing director since the acquisition, Access Bank’s total assets were N2.6 trillion. He would help grow that by 723 percent in less than nine years.
He spearheaded the bank’s merger with Diamond Bank in 2019, a business combination which created Africa’s largest bank by customer base with over 42 million customers at the time.
Under his stewardship, the bank became a holding company in 2022, enabling it to diversify into financial services like payments, pensions and asset management.
Wigwe led Access Holdings through several mergers and buyouts, including financiers in Kenya, South Africa, Zambia, Mozambique, Botswana and Angola.
Among the deals planned before this aviation tragedy snuffed out the life of the financial guru were the takeover of Uganda’s Finance Trust Bank Limited, and Standard Chartered’s banking businesses in Cameroon, the Gambia, Sierra Leone and Tanzania.
The bank has since appointed Bolaji Agbede as acting group chief executive officer to carry on the momentum. Agbede was Access’s most senior founding executive director in charge of business support until her appointment, according to a filing to the Nigerian Stock Exchange.
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