By JVINN Okafor (Managing Editor/Head of Business Desk)
Ace metropolitan banker and billionaire founder of the First City Monument Bank (FCMB), Otunba Subomi Balogun, is dead.
Otunba Balogun, a notable banker in Nigeria, Corporate lawyer and renowned philanthropist, passed on at the age of 89 years in a London hospital on Friday morning, May 19, 2023, News Direct newspaper reports. He studied law at the London School of Economics and was an alumnus of Igbobi College, Yaba, Lagos.
Before Subomi Balogun ventured into the world of finance and investment, he worked as a lawyer at the Western Region Ministry of Justice before he moved over to the Federal Ministry of Justice where he also worked until the January 1966 military coup. Afterwards, he delved into the banking industry and worked with the Nigerian Industrial Development Bank (NIDB).
At the NIDB, Otunba Subomi Balogun cut his teeth in corporate and investment banking. He was a Director of Operations at the Icon Securities, a subsidiary of the NIDB which specialised in merchant banking. With time, Otunba Balogun, became a major player in the Security and Exchange sector. He equally engaged in several other commodity trading ventures where he made good profits, according to him, before establishing the First City Merchant Bank which today transformed as First City Monument Bank (FCMB).
Late Subomi Balogun, an Ijebu high chief in Ogun State, South West, Nigeria, was renown as a man of class with Victorian values. He was born at Ijebu-Ode, Ogun State, to Muslim parents, in 1934, but converted to Christianity while in secondary school at the Igbobi College, Lagos. He was noted for his flamboyant lifestyle and sartorial elegance.
Otunba Balogun earned his law degree at the London School of Economics, after which he took on an entire career in Banking. He worked at the Nigerian Industrial Development Bank after the January 15, 1966 military intervention.
His interest in investment banking at the NIDB led him to advocate for establishing a merchant bank sponsored by NIDB. When ICON Securities, a merchant banking outfit was established in 1973 as a subsidiary of NIDB, Balogun moved to ICON Ltd as a director of operations.
Balogun’s ambition to head ICON was not realised, so he left the firm to found City Securities, a stock broking and issuing house which still operates at the capital market till this day. City Securities developed relationships with Mobil, Texaco and Total petroleum marketing companies, handling the company’s equity offerings.
He applied in 1979 for a merchant banking license to establish First City Merchant Bank. In the year 2001, the name was changed from First City Merchant Bank to First City Monument Bank.
Otunba Subomi Balogun is regarded in the Nigerian banking sector as a kind of Godfather of Nigerian banking. His banking and financial management acumen contributed significantly to the overall success of the Financial house (bank) he founded which is First City Monument Bank (FCMB).
But in 2001, he had a brush with the federal government under former President Olusegun Obasanjo, when his bank, FCMB, was accused of 'round tripping', a somewhat underhand forex transactional deals that profited his bank greatly but which the government said was against the nation's financial law.
It was indeed a terrible time then for Otunba Balogun, a philanthropist who singlehandedly built Tunwase Medical Center located between Shagamu - Ijebu Ode Expressway in Ogun State. NNL.
