Dr. Vivian Awele

Dr. Vivian Awele, the wife of billionaire businessman, Tony Elumelu, and a company he founded, HH Capital Limited, have acquired 23,196,236 units of the shares of the United Bank for Africa.

This was revealed in corporate notices on insider trading filed with the Nigerian Exchange Limited on Monday.

Mrs Elumelu bought a total of 9,624,441 units of UBA shares at an average price of N20.71. She bought the shares in four tranches of 7,124,446 shares at N20.65 per unit, 1,986,880 shares at N20.70 per unit, 500,000 shares at N20.75 per unit and 13,115 shares at NGN20.75 per unit.

The transaction worth about N199.32 million, took place on the platform of the NGX on Friday. Before now, Elumelu had been increasing her stake in the business.

The move is seen by capital market operators as one to strengthen the control of the chairman of the board of the lender, Tony Elumelu.

As of December 2022, the billionaire businessman held 194,669,555 shares directly and 2,185,934,184 units indirectly.

UBA’s half-year report revealed that Elumelu still held the same number of shares directly, but his indirect shareholding had increased to 2,332,702,730 units.

His investment vehicle, HH Capital Limited, bought 13,571,795 shares at N20.70 per unit, which brought the deal to about N280.94m.

The transaction took place last Monday on the NGX platform in Lagos.

The bank’s interim consolidated and separate financial statements for June 30, 2023, show HH Capital Limited was one of the companies through which Elumelu holds interest in UBA. HH Capital held 287,612,362 units of UBA shares as of June 2023.

Earlier this month, the Group Managing Director of United Bank for Africa, Oliver Alawuba, acquired over N2.95m worth of the bank’s shares.

Alawuba purchased 142,528 units of UBA’s shares at the rate of N20.70 per unit. This acquisition comes days after he bought an additional 22,816,172 shares at an aggregate price of N21.41 per share unit, bringing the deal to about N488.49m. According to the half-year report of UBA, Alawuba held directly 14,516,953 units of shares of the lender.