🍞The "Splash Brothers"

Hello!

Demilade here, yes, I know… I’m writing this edition of the newsletter this week. (big shoes to fill).

This edition explores the “Splash Brothers” of Nigerian business, Dangote and Otedola. We cover a story we skimmed through on Wednesday, Otedola doubling down on First Holdco, we follow Dangote’s global IPO roadshow, and we see some positives for Nigeria’s economy.

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Enjoy!

We reported on this on Wednesday, but this story is just too interesting to skim over 🍿

Through Calvados Global Services, his acquisition vehicle, Otedola scooped up 549.5 million units of First HoldCo shares at N79 each. His total holding now sits at 8.6 billion shares, about 19.4% of the company. He is paying two times as much as he paid in December. Behaviour that screams conviction from the chairman of the company.

How he got here

The story stretches back to 2021, when CBN removed Oba Otudeko and the FBN board over governance breaches, particularly around a N456 billion loan to Honeywell — the company Otudeko controls — that the bank struggled to recover. Later that year, Otedola crossed the 5% threshold and emerged as the largest shareholder. In July 2023, Otudeko staged a surprise comeback through Barbican Capital, buying 4.77 billion shares for N87.8 billion and displacing Otedola. Otedola became chairman in January 2024 anyway. By January 2025, Otudeko was writing to the board demanding Otedola's removal and his own reinstatement, the same month he was named in an EFCC lawsuit over an alleged N12.3 billion fraud alongside former FBN CEO Bisi Onasanya.

A LOT was happening, and maybe we’ll do a deep dive on this corporate saga in a special edition🤔.

The infighting “concluded” in July 2025. Otudeko and Tunde Hassan-Odukale (Leadway) sold their combined 10.43 billion shares, about 25% of the company, at N31 each, totalling roughly N323 billion ($420 million) across 17 off-market trades in a single day. First HoldCo clarified that Otedola did not buy any of the shares. The buyer was RC Investment Management Limited, incorporated in 2023, and reportedly associated with Renaissance Capital, a large investment bank in Nigeria. CBN had brokered the exit because the tussle was distracting from recapitalisation.

So Otedola got his chairmanship secured, but he did not get the equity. RC Investment now sits as the largest single shareholder at around 25%, ahead of Otedola even after Wednesday. His war chest for these continued buys came from divesting Geregu Power last December for $750 million.

Why now

The Q1 2026 numbers explain a lot. Gross earnings hit N942 billion (up 26.8%), pre-tax profit jumped 72.2% to N321 billion, and post-tax return-on-equity rocketed to 31.6% from 4.6% in December. The turnaround follows CBN's exit from regulatory forbearance, which forced banks to recognise balance sheet risks they had previously been allowed to defer. For First Bank, that meant a heavy 2025 write-off cycle that wrecked the FY numbers but left the balance sheet much cleaner for 2026. The bank also cleared its N500 billion recapitalisation threshold. Otedola is reportedly pushing for a N1 trillion recapitalisation for tier-1 banks.

Your Portfolio angle: Otedola is buying at YTD highs, in the largest single insider trade in the bank's recent history, on a cleaned-up balance sheet earning at industry-leading ROE. The bullish read is straightforward. The other read is that the equity battle is not actually closed. RC Investment still owns more First HoldCo than Otedola does, and N43.4 billion is the kind of move you make when you are still climbing toward parity. Watch this space

⛽ Dangote crowds out the import market: Nigeria's petrol import dependence is collapsing faster than expected. April data shows domestic refineries averaged 99.12% capacity utilisation, with Dangote Refinery hitting 100% for most of the month. Petrol production averaged 53.6 million litres per day, above the country's 50 million litre consumption benchmark. The kicker: imported petrol fell to 3.7 million litres per day in April, down from 40.1 million in March. Prices are still high because of the Strait of Hormuz blockade, but the import dependency story is structurally over.

🇳🇬 Oyedele calls out the "prejudice premium": Finance Minister Taiwo Oyedele used the Africa Forward Summit in Nairobi to argue that Africa carries a "prejudice premium" in global capital markets, with inflated borrowing costs and limited access to long-term financing. His pitch was twofold: push for reform of the global financial architecture, and stop waiting for it. He urged African governments to mobilise domestic savings, including pension funds, and shift financing priorities away from raw material extraction toward value addition, infrastructure, skills, and regional value chains. With over $120 trillion in global private capital seeking yield, his framing was that Africa needs to compete as an investment destination, not a recipient of aid.

PenCom clears pension funds for Dangote IPO: Speaking of pension funds, PenCom has granted Pension Fund Administrators a special one-off waiver to invest pension assets in the upcoming Dangote Petroleum Refinery & Petrochemicals IPO, suspending the usual rules around corporate profitability and dividend track record. The IPO is set to open mid-2026, offering roughly 10% of equity, with a valuation potentially reaching $50 billion (about N70 trillion), shaping up as one of the largest African listings ever. PenCom flagged this as a singular exception rather than a new precedent. Translation: Nigerian pension money has been cleared to back the most strategically important industrial asset on the continent, with retail access via POS, fintech, and mobile channels also confirmed.

Aliko Dangote has been everywhere this week, and every stop is calibrated for the IPO.

🇳🇴 Stop one: In Good Company podcast. Dangote sat with Nicolai Tangen, CEO of Norway's sovereign wealth fund, where he revealed his refinery rejected NNPC's bid to increase its stake beyond the current 7.25%. The state oil company had paid roughly $1 billion for that 7.25% in 2021, after initially agreeing to a 20% stake worth $2.76 billion and never completing payment. Dangote's framing was deliberate: "we want to now spread it and have everybody be part of it." Translation for foreign investors listening: no creeping state expansion, the IPO is the only way in.

💵 Stop two: dollar dividends. Same interview, bigger signal. Dangote promised dividends in dollars across his refinery, cement, fertiliser and petrochemicals businesses, because 80% of group revenue is now export-denominated. For Nigerian retail, that is a hedge against further naira devaluation. For foreign institutional capital, it removes the single biggest reason to discount Nigerian equities.

🇰🇪 Stop three: pan-African scale. Meanwhile in Nairobi, Dangote is in active negotiations for a $16 to $20 billion refinery jointly backed by Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania, with Mombasa emerging as a favoured site. Ruto used the Africa Forward Summit to back it openly, saying "we do not want to be held hostage by the Strait of Hormuz". Kenya will co-invest through its newly established National Infrastructure Fund.

Dangote is clear about his ambitions; he is pitching pan-African industrial infrastructure with hard-currency cash flows, governance signals friendly to foreign capital, and a state owner he can clearly say no to.

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