Femi Otedola has purchased another 147.74 million First HoldCo shares for N20.68 billion — roughly $15.2 million — through his vehicle Calvados Global Services Limited, lifting his ownership of FirstBank's parent company to 27.49%, according to Business Insider Africa. The shares were acquired at N140 each via a regulatory disclosure filed on Monday.
The latest transaction is modest in percentage terms — up from 27.16% — but it is the latest increment in an accumulation campaign that has been anything but gradual in capital terms. Nairametrics puts total disclosed 2026 purchases at approximately N412 billion, or more than $300 million at the official exchange rate. That figure covers five separate tranches: roughly 549.54 million shares for N43.41 billion in May; 706.13 million shares for N77.58 billion in July; 1.78 billion shares for N222.21 billion in the largest single disclosed transaction; 138.04 million shares for N18.11 billion in early August; and now the latest 147.74 million shares.
Otedola now controls approximately 12.05 billion shares in First HoldCo, a figure that is nearly six times the position he held when he became the group's chairman in January 2024. At the end of 2023, he held about 2.03 billion shares — a 5.65% stake. By end-2024 that had more than doubled to roughly 11.8%. The pace of accumulation in 2026 has dramatically outstripped both prior years combined.
The strategic logic is not subtle. Nigeria's Securities and Exchange Commission rules require any investor crossing 30% ownership to make a mandatory offer to all remaining shareholders. Otedola is now 2.51 percentage points below that line, meaning further open-market purchases will soon force a formal public bid — or require him to pause. He has publicly invoked his track record at African Petroleum, where he grew his stake from 28% to 75% to take majority control of what became Forte Oil, and at Geregu Power, where he moved from 51% to as much as 95% before a post-listing reduction. "I am on the same trajectory with First HoldCo Plc," he said, according to Business Insider Africa.
Reaching 51% would require acquiring billions of additional shares beyond his current 12.05 billion. Complicating that arithmetic is First HoldCo's ongoing equity capital raise — designed to help FirstBank meet the Central Bank of Nigeria's revised minimum capital requirements for banks — which will expand the total share count and potentially dilute existing holders, forcing Otedola to spend even more to hit a majority threshold. He has described his cumulative commitment to the group, which he puts at more than N600 billion over the years, as a generational investment.
The prize is not purely a Nigerian one. First HoldCo controls FirstBank, an institution founded in 1894 that operates across West and Central Africa — with subsidiaries or offices in Ghana, Senegal, Guinea, Sierra Leone, Gambia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and the United Kingdom. Whoever holds majority control of First HoldCo effectively holds the commanding heights of one of sub-Saharan Africa's oldest and most geographically distributed banking franchises.
Why it matters: Otedola's march toward 30% is now a question of when, not whether, forcing a mandatory offer that will compel every other First HoldCo shareholder to decide whether to tender at whatever price he names — or hold and bet he keeps buying at higher levels. For investors across the group's West and Central African footprint, the outcome of that offer will determine whether FirstBank's next chapter is written by a single controlling shareholder or a more dispersed ownership structure.