Nigeria debate: Participants

Ladi Balogun (LB) is chief executive of First City Monument Bank. He has more than 15 years’ experience in commercial and investment banking. Before joining FCMB in 1996, he worked at Citibank, New York, and at Morgan Grenfell in the UK. He has an MBA from Harvard University.

Anurag Saxena (AS) is an executive director and chief operating officer of First City Monument Bank. He has more than 17 years’ experience in sales, distribution, marketing, product development, strategy, IT and operations. He has worked with Barclays Bank, Standard Chartered Bank, Mashreq Bank and Citigroup. Anurag has an MBA from the Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta.

Francis Esem Wood (FW) is chief executive of First City Monument Bank’s investment banking group, and has responsibility for market-leading corporate finance, capital markets and brokerage businesses, soon to include structured finance and international asset management. He began his career at Merrill Lynch, Lehman Brothers and Credit Suisse. He has an MBA from London Business School.

Quinton Zunga (QZ) is head of debt capital markets for sub-Saharan Africa at Merrill Lynch. He is developing Merrill’s financing business across sub-Saharan Africa. To date he has been integrally involved in Merrill Lynch financing in Nigeria and developing Merrill’s relationships across the African continent. He joined Merrill Lynch from Barclays and Absa.

Babatunde Soyoye (BS) is managing director and co-founder of Helios, a leading sub-Saharan Africa private equity fund created in 2006. It has more than $600 million under management. Before forming Helios, he was a principal at the London offices of Texas Pacific Group, a leading global private equity firm managing more than $30 billion in capital.

John Porter (JP) is a managing director and head of Morgan Stanley global capital markets for Africa and the Middle East based in Dubai. He was involved in major financings and London Stock Exchange listings for GT Bank and Diamond Bank and led the recent $860 million IPO for Safaricom Kenya for which Morgan Stanley was sole global coordinator and bookrunner.

Sanjeev Chhugani (SC) is jointly responsible for the structured finance business and strategic alliances at Exotix, a frontier markets niche investment bank active in equity and debt capital markets, private equity and structured products in Africa. Before joining Exotix, he was based in southern Africa and headed an investment banking division operating in east and southern Africa.

Mohan Kaul (MK) was appointed director-general and chief executive of the Commonwealth Business Council on its establishment by the Commonwealth Heads of Government in Edinburgh in October 1997. He is also chairman of Zipp International and Commonwealth Project and Finance and a member of the Board and chairman of the governance committee of ICICI Bank (UK).

Sanmit Ahuja (SA) heads the investments and ventures divisions at the Commonwealth Business Council. Previously he set up and headed CBC’s India-related programme of activities out of the UK. He sits on the international alumni board of London Business School.