Wole Olajide
Ade Ayeyemi is a brilliant and highly experienced banker with over 3 decades of experience. He is the Group Chief Executive Officer of Ecobank. A Chartered Accountant who graduated with First Class Honours from the University of Ife, Ade is a trained UNIX Administrator and Network Operating Systems Manager. He has a Master’s degree in Financial Management from the University of London and he is an alumnus of the Harvard Business School’s Advanced Management Programme.
Prior to joining Ecobank, Mr Ayeyemi had a long and successful career with Citigroup, where he was CEO of Citigroup’s sub-Saharan Africa division based in Johannesburg. Infact, Ayeyemi spent over 25 years in Citibank where he rose through the ranks serving at various leadership capacity. His many interests include business strategy, economics, process engineering and technology. An avid reader and lover of sports, he enjoys soccer, running, cycling and tennis.
Under Ayeyemi’s watch, Ecobank Group delivered a return on tangible equity of 13.6% on profit before tax of $288 million, driven by a substantial decrease in impairments on loans; reported revenue of $1.8 billion was flat year-on-year in constant currency.
According to Ayeyemi, “Our 2017 financial performance was an encouraging improvement on 2016. We delivered a profit before tax of $288 million compared to a loss of $131 million in the previous year. $1.8 billion of revenue remained largely unchanged from 2016 due to our decision to keep a tight lid on loan growth.
“Our customers showed their confidence in the firm’s value proposition by giving us more of their deposits, which grew by 13%. “Also, our actions to improve the firm’s efficiency were productive as will be our progressive moves to rightsize and simplify our businesses, which have been designed to allow us to serve our customers better and create more sustainable value generation. We have reduced our efficiency ratio to 61.8% which evidences the effectiveness of these actions and we will continue to drive this ratio down.
“2017 also marked 2 years into our 5-year ‘Roadmap to Leadership’ and digitisation strategy through which we have made real strides in fixing the foundations on which our businesses can grow. Among other things, we have reorganised our businesses, overhauled our risk management, improved our controls and systems, adopted technology to drive efficiency, and we are addressing capital allocation. In 2018 and beyond our focus will be on one thing: relentless execution. We will use all our resources to support our mission to serve our customers better, run our businesses more efficiently, and generate returns that meet and exceed the cost of equity”
With the vision to consolidate a modern pan-African bank and to contribute to the economic development and financial integration of the continent, Ecobank remains committed and focused on its goals.
Ecobank offers a natural advantage with its unmatched pan-African banking competencies, built up over the last 25 years. Marshalling its impressively broad presence, its proficiency and its performance, the bank is focused on delivering sustainable returns and playing a catalytic role in the transformation of Africa.