Nigerian billionaire Femi Otedola spends $56 million on First HoldCo shares in his largest single purchase

Femi Otedola has spent ₦77.58 billion ($56.2 million) buying 706.13 million shares in First HoldCo, the largest sum he has committed to a single transaction since taking the chairmanship of Nigeria's oldest bank.

The purchase was executed through Calvados Global Services, the investment vehicle behind most of his accumulation, and disclosed in an insider dealing statement filed with the Nigerian Exchange on Wednesday. It lifts his stake to 21.96 percent from 20.42 percent and takes his holding to 9,983,923,216 shares, 16 million short of 10 billion. At Wednesday's close of ₦105.45, the position is worth ₦1.05 trillion ($763 million).

He paid an average of ₦109.87 a share, meaning the chairman went roughly 4 percent above the prevailing market price to secure the block, the first time he has bought at a premium to the screen.

Bigger than anything he has written before

The cheque dwarfs his previous purchases. His largest before Wednesday came on May 13, when he spent ₦43.41 billion ($31.5 million) on 549.54 million shares at an average of ₦79. Wednesday's outlay is close to double that.

The sequence shows how sharply the cost of building the position has risen. He acquired 534.09 million shares at ₦30.00 in September 2024 for about ₦16 billion ($11.6 million). A year later he spent ₦2.01 billion ($1.5 million) on 64.87 million shares. In December 2025 he paid ₦40.06 a share for 370 million units, costing roughly ₦14.8 billion ($10.7 million). Last month he took about 672.9 million shares through the second tranche of First HoldCo's private placement at around ₦44, at a cost of ₦29.6 billion ($21.4 million).

Those six disclosed transactions since September 2024 come to roughly ₦183.4 billion ($132.9 million). Nigerian outlets have put his total investment in the group above ₦250 billion ($181.2 million) once earlier purchases dating back to 2021 are included.

What the money bought

The spending has been rewarded. The holding has crossed ₦1 trillion, a threshold no individual shareholder has previously reached in a Nigerian bank.

The September 2024 block bought at ₦30.00 has more than tripled in value. The December 2025 tranche at ₦40.06 has gained roughly 160 percent. The June placement shares, taken at around ₦44, have more than doubled in five weeks.

Only Wednesday's purchase sits underwater, and only marginally, at ₦109.87 against a ₦105.45 close.

Buying into a doubling market

The escalating cost reflects a share price that has run hard. First HoldCo opened 2026 at ₦47.90 and traded around ₦62 in mid-June, when the same stake was worth ₦575 billion ($416.7 million). The stock closed at ₦79.35 on July 15 and touched a record ₦105.50 on Monday.

The rally followed half-year results showing pre-tax profit of ₦653.54 billion ($473.6 million), up 83.5 percent from ₦356.15 billion ($258.1 million) a year earlier, with second-quarter pre-tax profit of ₦332.42 billion ($240.9 million), nearly double the same period in 2025. Monday's close lifted the group's market capitalisation to about ₦4.80 trillion ($3.48 billion), taking it past Zenith Bank and Guaranty Trust Holding Company to become Nigeria's most valuable banking stock.

Foreign institutional investors have driven much of the buying, drawn to a franchise they had avoided for the better part of a decade. The group absorbed ₦826.3 billion ($598.8 million) in impairment charges during 2025 to clear legacy non-performing loans accumulated over decades, a decision that cut full-year pre-tax profit by 70.5 percent and drew criticism at the time. It also removed the opaque loan book that had made the bank difficult for international allocators to underwrite.

A record 1.26 billion shares changed hands in a single session on July 9. Nigeria's scheduled reclassification into the FTSE Russell Frontier Market Index in September has added further pressure on benchmark-aware funds to hold large, liquid Nigerian equities.

Funding the plan himself

The spending runs alongside a recapitalisation Otedola has pushed since taking the chair in January 2024. Shareholders approved a ₦253.1 billion ($183.4 million) capital raise at the annual general meeting on May 29, part of his target of a ₦1 trillion ($724.6 million) paid-up capital base at First Bank of Nigeria, double the Central Bank of Nigeria's ₦500 billion ($362.3 million) minimum for lenders holding international licences.

Paying above market for a block of that size sends a particular signal to the exchange. A chairman willing to write a ₦77.58 billion cheque at a premium, days after the shares hit an all-time high, is telling the market he does not regard the stock as fully priced. His stake stood at 18.12 percent in the audited 2025 accounts. It has risen by nearly four percentage points in seven months to 21.96%, and he has given no indication that he intends to stop.