Femi Otedola Invests in Transcorp, Buys 5.5% Stake?

By Aduragbemi Omiyale

There are reports that a billionaire businessman, Mr Femi Otedola, has acquired a sizeable stake in Transcorp Plc, making him the second largest shareholder of the company.

In the 2022 financial statements of Transcorp analysed by Business Post, it was disclosed by the firm that, “As at December 31, 2022, only UBA Nominees Limited-Trading, held 5% or more of the issued and fully paid shares of 50 Kobo of the company.”

It was then stated that UBA Nominees’ stake in the firm amounted to 9.25 per cent (3,760,000) in the period under review compared with 9.26 per cent (3,762,647) in the previous year.

On Tuesday, Transcorp was the most traded stock after it sold about 1.6 billion units, out of which about 1.5 billion units were purchased, according to Nairametrics, by Mr Otedola at N2.1 billion.

Today, Transcorp also topped the activity chart after it traded 117.5 million units at the close of transactions, of which 115 million units were reportedly acquired by the chairman of Geregu Power Plc at N161 million.

Before now, Transcorp has witnessed heavy transactions on the floor of the Nigerian Exchange (NGX) Limited in off-market deals believed to be carried out for Mr Otedola, pushing his control of the firm to 5.5 per cent at over 2.200 billion shares.

Based on this information, he will be the second highest shareholder of Transcorp, a company which has a fellow billionaire businessman, Mr Tony Elumelu, as Chairman.

According to the 2022 audited reports of Transcorp, Mr Elumelu directly has 273,104,041 shares in the conglomerate and indirectly has 567,528,915 shares of Transcorp through HH Capital Limited and Heirs Holdings Limited.

According to its details on CSCS, UBA Nominees Limited was registered in August 2007 as a private unlimited company and has UBA Trustees Limited, Mr Emmanuel Nnorom and three others as directors.

It is controlled by UBA Group, which has Mr Elumelu as its chairman.

At the time of filing this report, Transcorp was yet to inform the investing public, through the stock exchange, of this deal.

Transcorp controls subsidiaries like Transcorp Hotels, Transcorp Power, and Transcorp Energy. These entitled also have businesses under their care.