Access Bank CEO buys £15m mansion on London Billionaires’ Row — Report

Roosevelt Ogbonna, chief executive officer of Access Bank Plc, bought a mansion for £15 million ($20 million) on a street in London’s Hampstead neighbourhood nicknamed Billionaires’ Row, marking a rare transaction in the city’s beleaguered luxury housing market.

A report on Wednesday by Bloomberg said Ogbonna, who has been the boss of Nigeria’s largest bank by assets for over three years, purchased the sprawling mansion in August, according to a UK filing.

A representative for Ogbonna, who’s one of Nigeria’s well-known bankers, didn’t respond to a request for comment.

The deal, one of London’s most expensive this summer, is the latest example of high-end homes being sold at steep discounts in the UK capital this year after stamp duty increases and the abolition of a preferential tax status enjoyed by ultra-rich foreign residents hammered demand. There were 45% more price reductions on £5 million-plus properties between January and May than the same period last year, data from researcher LonRes show.

Still, a handful of mega-deals defied the slump this year, including several transactions involving wealthy foreigners. A member of the multibillionaire family behind Thomson Reuters Corp. agreed to buy a high-end London apartment for about £25 million earlier this year, while Silicon Valley investor Matt Cohler bought a detached house in Notting Hill for roughly £22 million at the end of April.

Ogbonna leads Access Bank, which is on an ambitious five-year growth plan that seeks to double the share of assets outside its home market by 2027. It ranks among Africa’s five biggest banks. It has operations in about 24 countries, including the United Arab Emirates and the UK, servicing more than 63 million customers in three continents.

The banker resigned as a non-executive director of the lender’s parent company, Access Holdings Plc, in August, but remains CEO of the bank. (BusinessDay)