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Nigerian multimillionaire banker Tony Elumelu has seen the market value of his stock in United Bank for Africa Plc (UBA), one of Nigeria’s largest banks, climb by more than N1.2 billion ($2.8 million) since the year began.
Elumelu, who is the founder of UBA, a leading financial services group with more than N8.35 trillion ($20.3 billion) in assets as of Sept. 30, 2021, has a significant 6.96-percent ownership position in the pan-African banking business, totaling 2,380,941,756 ordinary shares.
The increase in the market value of his holding may be attributed to a recent jump in the bank’s shares, as investors maintained buying interest in anticipation of a higher dividend distribution this year compared to the previous year.
As of press time, Feb. 15, the bank’s shares were trading at N8.5 ($0.0204), 2.3-percent lower than their opening price on the Nigerian Exchange this morning.
In the past three months, UBA ranks the ninth most-traded stock on the local bourse, with a total of 568 million shares exchanged by investors and dealers on the local market in 10,079 transactions worth N4.6 billion ($11 million).
Since the start of the year, the price of UBA shares on the exchange has climbed from N8 ($0.0192) to N8.5 ($0.0204) as of the time of the writing of this article, resulting in a gain of 6.3 percent for shareholders.
As a result of the price increase, the market value of Elumelu’s equity position has risen from N19 billion ($45.8 million) at the start of trading on Jan. 4 to N20.2 billion ($48.6 million) at the time of writing.
This amounts to a N1.2-billion ($2.8 million) gain for the multimillionaire businessman, who also has interests in the oil, healthcare and insurance industries in Nigeria through his privately held investment firm, Heirs Holdings.
Elumelu has recently shown interest in Caribbean markets as part of a strategic drive to foster wealth creation in the region through partnership to encourage wealth creation in Africa, the Caribbean and the Black diaspora.
To ease the move, he stated that he will engage with politicians during his anticipated travel to Jamaica later this year to promote his commercial and financial interests in the region.
