Union Bank of Nigeria Plc to Titan Trust Bank Limited, after the consummation this week of a share sale and purchase deal, handing 93.4 per cent stake held by a group of core investors is now owned by the emerging markets focused investment firm Tropical General Investments Limited (TGI), the parent company of the digital bank.
The investment company, based in Lagos with offices in Dublin, Ireland has interests in pharmaceuticals, FMCG, agricultural inputs, homecare products and industrial chemicals.
Formed approximately three and a half years ago, Titan Trust got a national banking license to operate in Nigeria and got off to a quiet start although it was positioning itself as a challenger bank.
Dubai-based Vink Corporation, a subsidiary of TGI, serves as the trading unit of the group and is named after Cornelius G Vink, the chairman, founder and owner of TGI.
After the takeover of Union Bank, the bank appointed new directors to its board and a new chief executive officer. The new CEO is Titan Trust Bank’s managing director, Mudassir Amray, while the directors are Farouk Gumel, Andrew Ojel, Abubakar Mohammed and Lawrence Mackombo. Mr Gumel is the chairman.
Below is a profile of TGI’s top shareholders, the new owners of Union Bank.
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CORNELIUS G VINK
A citizen of the Netherlands, Mr Vink has been operating in Nigeria as far back as the 1980s and was conferred with the national honor of Member of the Federal Republic (MFR) late President Umaru Yar’Adua.
He established TGI in 1991 with a small and obscure company, Comart Nigeria Limited, in a corner of Lagos, dealing in importation of chemicals into the country.
An organic growth within a decade and a year extended the firm’s subsidiaries to 15, with some of the companies including Chi Limited, West Africa Cotton Company (WACOT), Chi Farms, TGI Distri Limited, Chi Pharma, ORC Fishing, Kaizen Properties, Master Marine, WACOT Rice, Fludor Benin S.A, Fludor Ghana and West Africa Soy Industries Limited. TGI owns more than one hundred brands in different sectors.
Mr Vink sold a minority interest equivalent to 40 per cent shareholding of Chi Limited, maker of popular brands like CapriSun and Chivita, for $240 million to Coca Cola in 2016.
“We were approached by many prestigious global companies and we decided to do a deal with the largest of them all,” the billionaire said at the time.
He would later sell the remaining 60 per cent stake to the same acquirer, with the entire transaction rising to $1 billion.
“I … need to make more clarifications on the ownership structure of Titan. The bank is 85% owned by Vink Corporation – a foreign company,” Tunde Lemo, chair of Titan Trust said after the share purchase was announced in December.
“The local shareholders own the balance, and shareholding is dispersed. My shareholding is therefore very tiny and insignificant. I am only providing leadership,” he added.
According to the 2020 audited annual report of the lender seen by PREMIUM TIMES, Luxis International DMCC and Magna International DMCC, both of them parts of Vink Corporation DMCC, hold 48.09 per cent and 37.39 per cent stakes respectively in Titan Trust, summing up to 85.5 per cent.
Source: Premium Times
