The newly appointed Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of the Bank of Industry, Mr Rasheed Adejare Olaoluwa resumed duties at BOI’s head office in Lagos. The former Acting Managing Director and CEO of the Bank of Industry, Mr. Waheed Olagunju, who handed over to the new CEO, received him alongside other members of the Bank’s Executive Management Committee.
Speaking at the brief ceremony, Mr. Olaoluwa said all hands must be on deck towards ensuring that BOI strengthens its operations for global competitiveness and be at par with some of the world’s leading development finance institutions. He stated that the task of increasing the contribution of the manufacturing sector to Nigeria’s Gross Domestic Product cannot be undertaken by BOI alone. According to the new CEO of BOI, for the bank to effectively deliver on its mandate, the institution would have to work closely with other relevant stakeholders towards addressing the non-financial issues facing the manufacturing sector and Micro Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs).
Mr. Olaoluwa added that “urgent steps would have to be taken to improve on BOI’s service delivery to enable it meet the unemployment challenges facing the country especially in the areas of wealth and job creation”.
Before his appointment, Mr. Olaoluwa was the Group Chief Executive Officer of UBA Capital Plc, a pan-African asset management and investment banking group, from January 2013 to May 2014, and prior to that, he was an Executive Director at the United Bank for Africa (UBA) between March 2008 and December 2012. This was coupled with his role as Chief Executive Officer of UBA Africa, where he played a key role in the expansion of UBA’s operations into 18 countries in sub-Saharan Africa within three years, recording exponential growth in the bank’s deposit base and profitability during his tenure.
Before joining UBA in 2006, Mr. Olaoluwa’s career path had taken him across Arthur Andersen where he started his career in the financial services industry, and he has held various senior roles in marketing and relationship management, treasury management, currency trading and investment banking, crowning in his appointment as the Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer of the erstwhile Universal Trust Bank Plc.
An Associate of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria, the new Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer holds a first class honours degree in Civil Engineering from the University of Ife, and an executive MBA degree from International Graduate School of Management (IESE), Spain.