The financial sector has lost one of the best brains in the industry with the death of the Managing Director of FBN Capital, Osaze Osifo.
Osifo, aged 45 who was on an official visit to Abuja, was said to have died in his sleep yesterday morning at the Transcorp Hilton Hotel.
A top class professional, Osifo joined FirstBank of Nigeria in 2010, to manage all the bank’s investment banking and asset management businesses across the different subsidiaries.
These include FBN Capital, First Trustees, First Funds and its global custody business. He joined FirstBank from Travant Capital, an investment and advisory firm, which he co-founded and led from inception in January 2007.
He has led some advisory mandates at Travant and managed the fund raising and partial deployment of a $107million private equity fund focused on West and Central Africa.
Osifo started his career in 1990 at HSBC Investment Bank, UK, where he initially worked as a trader in the capital markets business on different products including money market instruments, derivatives, foreign exchange and fixed income securities for eight years.
He moved across to the investment banking division as a corporate financier in the Mergers and Acquisition, and Telecoms departments.
He had two Masters, one in Finance from the London Business School, and the other in Management Science and Operational Research from the University of Warwick.
He also had a Bachelors in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Lagos. Commenting on Osifo’s demise, the Managing Director of Financial Derivatives, Bismarck Rewane, said it was a big loss to the financial sector.
“The banking industry and the markets have lost one of the greatest minds and thinkers in modern finance in Nigeria. “He was never short of ideas and was always willing to execute them.
He was practical and pragmatic. The gap he is creating will be very difficult to fill not just for FirstBank, but for the industry as a whole,” he said.
One of his colleagues, who opted not to be quoted because he is not authorised to do so, said: “It is unfortunate that he has passed on.
Our thoughts and prayers are with his family. We lost a very bright mind. He has just transformed FBN Capital. He was always full of ideas. We are really going to miss him,” he said.
Comments
Comfort to the family. Shalom.