Unity Bank Plc has appointed Ebenezer Kolawole as the acting managing director and chief executive following the retirement of Oluwatomi Somefun who completed her tenure as MD/CEO.
The appointment was announced at the Bank’s 18th Annual General Meeting (AGM), held in Lagos on Wednesday, after securing necessary approval from its primary regulator, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).
Kolawole, who had over three decades of industry experience, began his financial services career at Caribbean Finance Limited (an affiliate of CFL in Cayman Island) in Kaduna in 1992. He later joined Ecobank where he worked in various departments of the Bank, both Operations and Finance suites and rose to the position of Deputy Financial Controller. He moved to Standard Trust Bank (STB) and worked at various strategic areas including Operations, Regulatory Risk Management and Finance suites and played a pivotal role in the STB/UBA merger.
Post-merger, he served as chief Financial officer (CFO) of the United Bank for Africa. He moved to Mainstreet Bank as the Bank’s Group Chief Finance Officer (GCFO) and actively drove the turnaround and transformation initiatives of the Bank. He had a brief stint at Globacom, a foremost and Nigeria’s leading Indigenous Telecommunication giant, where he served in various capacities for corporate business development.
He joined Unity Bank Plc as Chief Financial Officer (CFO) in 2015. He was later, in February 2018, appointed the Executive Director to oversee Finance, Operations and Information Technology, where he played a key role in the Bank’s strategic transformation and cost optimization initiatives which enhanced the Bank’s performance and market feasibility.
In line with the Bank’s succession and business continuity plans,
Kolawole is saddled with the primary responsibility of finalizing the Bank’s ongoing corporate programmes and other strategic business initiatives of the institution.
Mr. Kolawole holds a First-Class (Hons) Degree in Accounting from Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU), Ile-Ife. He has participated in several management/executive education programmes at Columbia Business School, New York, USA and The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA.
He is a member of several professional bodies including a Fellow of The Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria (FCA); a Fellow of the Institute of Credit Administration, (FICA), an Honorary Member of the Chartered Institute of Bankers of Nigeria (HCIB), Associate Member of The Nigeria Institute of Management (AMNIM); Member of the Institute of Directors amongst others.
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