Buy A Bank? Yes,You Can!

Professionals at the top of their organisations jetting out of Nigeria for greener pastures need to do themselves a favour before getting on that flight: read Aigboje Imoukhouede’s account of the making of the Access Bank we know today.

Like them, he rose through the ranks, paying his dues at Continental Merchant Bank, Prime Merchant Bank, and finally Guaranty Trust Bank.

Unlike them, he made use of his visionary instincts fed by market intelligence and with Herbert Wigwe as a partner raised N800 million to buy a bank that was making its way to a public offer.

Unbelievable for two 36-year-old gentlemen each with about 12 years of experience? Read Standing on the Tarmac, the title of this rivetting, personal testimony, straight, as they say, from the horse’s mouth.

This account shows that there will always be excuses to toe the line of resistance for men and women of lesser grit and that it takes courage, vision, and the nose for opportunities to excel in any environment.

It is a compulsory read for start-ups and young Nigerians who may be discouraged by the country’s depressing economic indicators. It will enable them to seek the diamonds in the rubles.

Aigboje emphasises the contrast between where both came from and where they were headed. Their parents were senior civil servants devoted to the standard routine of working for the government for 35 years until retirement and then relying on pension till old age.

Accustomed to this stability, his mum’s concern was natural. She wondered why her son, the youngest of the management at GTB  could no longer queue to get to the top but wanted to take on the herculean challenge of owning a bank. ” where will you get the money? She asked.

This filial pressure from the maternal instinct to protect her child from risk is often the point of reversal for many ambitious men.

But this was a different son who had done his homework and was just waiting for the right time to strike.

It is said that opportunity only comes to those who are prepared. As Agboje and Herbert were looking for a bank to buy, Access Bank chose to go on a public offer to raise more funds. The figure was N800 million. Both had N200 million. Yet before the deadline, they were able to meet the target. Where there is a will, there is a way.

Perhaps, for the first time, this book reveals the proposition that became the game changer: the value chain theory. As a strategy for competitive advantage, it tracks the process through which value is generated in the production, distribution, exchange, and consumption of a product or service making it possible to identify gaps in value losses. The new management led by Agboje offered two critical values:revenue gain and reduction of losses. This was more than banking. It was a holistic surgery that took the internal processes of potential clients through intensive X-rays revealing the challenges and offering new expertise.

To establish this new niche, the management set up the in-house training school where recruits to the executive cadre – all with second class upper minimum-spent four months internalizing the logic and application of the idea.

On graduation from the Access Bank School of Banking Excellence, they were deployed to the sectors the management believed had the highest return on efforts – cement, beverages, telecommunications, oil, and gas. Among their key skills was how to use relationship marketing to maximize the industrial networks of producers, suppliers, distributors, and regulators and convert them to customers.

 Executing these operations by leading from the front, Agboje and his team inspired the Access Bank’s team to brave the odds with zero tolerance for rejections. The methods worked. In the first year, the revived bank made a profit of a billion naira.

Running with this winning formula became the stimulus for more success despite the rapid changes in the regulatory policies of the Central Bank of Nigeria, the apex bank, and its successive czars.

Thanks to his vision and enterprise, Agboje, like a footballer who converts a throw to a goal, was able to turn the Settlement policy of the apex bank to advantage by duplicating the relationship and devising a means to help other banks process at a profit. The strategic engagement that enabled the bank to raise N25 billion to meet the apex bank minimum capital base under Professor Soludo is another miracle.

The purchase of Intercontinental Bank to boost the retail business and its integration despite sabotage caused by the perception among staff that it was a hostile take-over were milestones that manifested the doggedness of these professionals.

A word for parents: do we really know what is going on in the mind of our kids? The author took this title from an experience he had as a young student who was elbowed out by adults while trying to board a plane on the tarmac. He resolved never to be left on the tarmac again.

In the course of this account, he reminds himself of this vow each time he saw an opportunity and made sure he got on the plane.

In common parlance, he had a lifelong ambition never to be left on a tarmac.

When I bought this book at Terra Kulture,  Tiamiyu Savage Street on Victoria Island about 1 pm on Thursday, I imagined that it would take me the Easter holiday to read. However, as I turned the last page at 11 pm the same day, I wondered what happened and longed for more.

That demonstrates how the beautiful prose and the newsy account enthralled me. Sincerely, this is unputdownable!