First Bank of Nigeria

First Bank of Nigeria

First Bank of Nigeria opened in 1894 as the Bank of British West Africa, making it the oldest bank in Nigeria and one of the longest continuously operating financial institutions in sub-Saharan Africa. Adesola Adeduntan leads the institution as CEO, with billionaire investor Femi Otedola serving as Chairman of the holding company, FBN Holdings Plc. The group's wealth is not a family fortune but the accumulated franchise value of a commercial bank that holds the deposits of roughly one in three Nigerian businesses. Its structurally distinct position is that of a universal banking group whose proprietary investment activities run through a network of subsidiaries — including FBNQuest, FirstBank Trustees, and First Asset Management — that collectively manage the group's own treasury placements and third-party client assets. The group deploys capital across private credit, commercial real estate, infrastructure, and energy, with a geographic concentration in Nigeria, Ghana, and the broader Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) region. Through FBNQuest, the investment banking and asset management arm, the bank commits to direct debt and equity transactions alongside select co-investors — confirmed portfolio exposures include Lagos Free Zone developer Tolaram Group and multiple upstream oil and gas service providers in the Niger Delta. The bank's treasury division is one of the largest single lenders to the Nigerian sovereign via open-market operations and bond auctions run by the Central Bank of Nigeria. In infrastructure, the group participates as mandated lead arranger on project finance syndications for road and port development, notably the Lekki Deep Sea Port, which recorded its first commercial transshipment operations in 2023. First Bank employs a group-wide workforce in the thousands, with principal operations in Lagos and additional booking centers in London, Paris, Beijing, Johannesburg, Kinshasa, and Accra. The bank's UK subsidiary, FBN Bank (UK) Limited, provides trade finance and correspondent banking between European counterparties and the Nigerian market. The group's asset management and trusteeship vehicles collectively sit atop a pool of proprietary and client assets that is not publicly disaggregated. In February 2024, the bank announced a successful issuance of NGN 300 billion in commercial paper to fund working capital and meet near-term regulatory liquidity ratios. The bank also makes minority limited partner commitments to Nigeria-focused private equity and venture capital fund managers, though it discloses no formal fund-of-funds program. What structurally differentiates First Bank is its function as a private-credit allocator disguised as a legacy commercial bank. Unlike a pure family office or fund manager, the bank's deal origination is underwritten by its commercial lending relationships — it sees the cash flows of virtually every large Nigerian corporate before any external GP does. The holding company structure, with a publicly traded parent (FBN Holdings) and privately governed investment subsidiaries, creates an unusual hybrid: a public-mandate balance sheet that allocates proprietary capital through private, lightly disclosed vehicles. The group's London and Paris subsidiaries further allow it to warehouse hard-currency-denominated assets in a landscape where Nigerian institutional allocators routinely face foreign-exchange friction.