When you started out as a young entrepreneur many years ago, you had some ambitions. But your businesses seem to have gone beyond your expectations. How do you feel about this?
It makes me humble. As I have always said, God is my guide and consummate supporter. I started out as a stockbroker and, with due appreciation to my God, I was the first Nigerian to single-handedly set up a stock broking firm, just as I was also the first Nigerian to set-up a merchant bank. I call it the grace of God.
Let me tell you one thing. May be you didn’t know that I only trained as a lawyer. Subsequently, the government of then-Western Region trained me in the British Parliament to be a parliamentary draftsman. When ultimately the government of Nigeria, in fact, the leader of the Central Bank decided to set-up a development bank, they brought in the World Bank as their partner.
I was just in my place when a very good friend, Gamaliel Onosede (may his soul rest in peace), came to my house (I was then living on Glover Road, Ikoyi) and said ‘Mike, there’s this development bank being set-up by the government and the World Bank. I am sure they will need a legal draftsman to be drafting agreements.
And for the life of me, I didn’t know anybody on the panel. So, in my early thirties, I got another big job in a financial institution – the Nigerian Industrial Development Bank (NIDB). The institution was multifaceted and, among many other things they were doing, they were also interested in what was happening in the capital market, capital issues, and stock broking.
It was a small subsidiary of the firm. And because of my divine gift of multi-tasking and being inquisitive, I got there, and I was made the lawyer and secretary. But I started trying to see what else I could be involved in, and the stock exchange excited me.
Not long after that, the NIBD decided to send me to the World Bank in Washington and also to Wall Street in New York, and I felt it was an opening. There, I met distinguished lawyers who were heading stock broking firms.
I met investment bankers who were there. When I returned from my training, I went to my bosses and said we should have an investment bank as our subsidiary to be raising money and doing other things. It took them some time to accept. I didn’t know what their reason was. Maybe they thought I was ambitious, but God has His ways of opening doors for me.
Suddenly, I was invited with another candidate, a chartered accountant and the first Nigerian woman to be trained as a chartered accountant, the late Mrs. Olutoyin Olakunri, and our bosses told us that ‘both of you would be doing something about Icon Securities’. This was a secondary job for me because I was sitting comfortably as the chief legal adviser and company secretary.
I got there and I was excited. I remember going in London buses and I recall seeing people reading the Financial Times. One day, I stood up from my seat and went to the man who was reading it and I said, “sir, are you looking for the result of the by-exams? I find that you’re always reading this”.
The man smiled and said “I am a stockbroker and, every day, the stocks list from the London Stocks Exchange is always in the paper”. All these were preparations that were being divinely made. I was just being someone who wanted to do everything by nature. So, whenever I arrived at anywhere activities were going on, I showed interest.
And as I said, two of us were appointed to be Directors of Icon Securities, and to be alternating the leadership of that subsidiary.
And so we worked for some time, and it was advised that Toyin, being an accountant, should first take the shot.
A few months later, when I was given my own chance, I arrived in the office one day, and Toyin, who was very close to me, walked in and said, “Subomi, I am resigning”. I said why? She said “I would be telling you”.
She had hardly left when my telephone rang, and my boss, Silas Daniel, who was the group Managing Director, said, “Subomi, come and see me”.
I went and he said to me, “Sit down, Mrs Olakunri is leaving us, and you have to take that position as the head of the stock broking subsidiary”.
I was so glad. I immediately appointed my deputy (now deceased also) as acting Company Secretary. I virtually moved my things into Icon Securities Limited, a subsidiary of NIDB. Somehow, fortune smiled on me again.
These are part of the reasons I always refer to my God, my God. The chief executive of the Stock Exchange turned out to be my former student. So he gave me a bit of trust, and I was given the privilege of handling the public sales of UAC which was the biggest conglomerate, the public sale of Nigerian Bottling Company, the public sale of a number of companies.
A time came and we were going to incorporate ourselves into banking and my boss said “you can’t be given the job, you’re only a lawyer. I will redeploy you to your law” though, practically, everybody in the business and in the stock exchange had seen me as the man of the moment. Everybody knew about me as the man topmost in the stock exchange. I was distressed that I wouldn’t be given the job.
I ran around to everybody I knew in Lagos and some people in the chamber of commerce. And my boss said, “Well, we could make him a Director and he would be strictly in charge of stock exchange”.
So, one day, I called my wife and said I wanted to resign. I said I must resign. So I went to a friend’s office and asked “Can you type me this letter?” It was my letter of resignation. I went to the office very early.
I went in and I said to my boss, “You made use of me to do this and do that, but you wouldn’t want me to head the subsidiary business. What you have not done for me, I am sure my God will do it”. I threw my resignation letter on his table and that was the end of my career in NIDB. So I decided to set up a stock broking firm.
Did you ever consider setting up a law firm as a lawyer?
I have a childish habit. Any time I want to do something, I would write it down and put it inside the Bible in my altar; I would be asking God just like I said when I wanted to start everything: “My God, show me the way. Don’t let me make wrong choices”.
I would just throw myself into the arms of my Maker and tell Him to help me. My whole life is a wonder to me. And I am saying it again, I only had a degree in law, but the ideas are just coming. When you talk of FCMB, I was the first to conceive the idea of Group structure.
We had what I call a financial supermarket. I had a stock broking company, a capital issues company and then we set up the bank itself. And after that, I had an asset management company, pension management, etc.
All the companies, I call them First City Group, and, recently, we changed the name to FCMB Group. To be honest with you, I admit that I am not the one doing all this, the ideas just come to me and I don’t understand.
So I am spending the rest of my life just thanking my God and doing anything that the good Lord will guide me do. As regard challenges, I will say no one is greater than God. Once you embrace your God, whatever challenges you have would be subsumed in the divine achievements. For example, as I said earlier on, when we wanted a license, someone said “don’t give it to him, he is a friend of Awolowo”.
But I prefer talking about what God has done for me rather than telling the challenges. And at 88, I am not tired. I am still wearing suits like you young men, because I believe the good Lord still has a lot of work to give me to do. So I have dedicated my life to serving Him.
Do you see Fintech companies as a threat to commercial banks?
In our own case, capital market and normal banking will meet together. If you are trying to raise money from the capital market, we have a company that handles that. If you want to buy shares from the Stock Exchange, we have.
And if you want to go into real banking, even mortgages, even as we speak I heard that our bank is trying to help people who want to get their own homes, so we are doing everything.
That was why I said I conceived the idea of Group structure and, with a due sense of modesty, I think I would be one of the people who first started the idea of Group. I called it First City Group. There are a lot of avenues a bank or a financial institution can go into.
And I am encouraging the younger bankers not just to limit their activities to core banking but to go into different aspects of financial services. Truth is that what I would call financial assistance to communities is very wide, which may include what is today expressed as financial inclusion, where technology has become the vehicle.
Fintech companies are merely complimenting what the traditional institutions started. FCMB, this morning, I read in the newspaper, for instance, is asking people to come and take money to build their own houses; we’re getting strong in pensions, we’re asking for assets to be managed for us, we’re trying to be financial advisers. That was the idea I had, I call it a financial supermarket. Any ingenious banker would not just stay in mundane banking.
For instance, if you go on the streets of Lagos, you will see some locals selling dollars. Some institutions have institutionalized this and added it to their banking. Let me emphasize this, there’s no end to what you can do with financial services, not just banking alone.
There is hardly nothing that is not within the financial services today, which we generally call banking. I started as a capital market man and I still recall people calling me ‘Colossus’, the ‘Grandmaster’ because I dabbled into many things.
I was always seen in the market. The one thing I am thankful to God for is that He has always made me a multifaceted businessman. Young CEOs should go beyond mundane banking, they should extend their tentacles, buy into other companies by acquiring their shares.
