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The sharks smell blood, and they are circling

On Wednesday afternoon at 4:30pm, senior executives of eight of our leading banks gathered in the boardroom of Femi Otedola's Zenon Oil to discuss a proposed restructuring of the N204 billion debt that the diesel king is hard pressed to repay.

The alarmed bankers had been spurred to action after news that Access Bank, one of Mr. Otedola's many lenders, was seeking court permission to wind down African Petroleum, the petroleum products retailer 80 percent owned by Zenon. AP apparently had declined to pay a months overdue loan of $35 million (over N5 billion) and seemed reluctant or unable to do so.

The bankers, from Zenith, which has the largest exposure to Zenon to the tune of about N63 billion, as well as United Bank of Africa Plc (about N33 billion), Guarantee Trust Bank Plc (N23 billion), Access Bank Plc and First City Monument Bank Plc, were looking at Mr. Otedola's proposal and wondering how they found themselves in this position.

Outside the large bay windows of the white office building on the Walter Carrington Crescent on Victoria Island, they could see the glistening hull of Mr. Otedola's £12 million luxury yacht , named after his wife Nana, sitting idle on the Lagos lagoon, because it is too big to sail freely through the highly silted water.

The hitherto high-flying Mr. Otedola, as recently as a few months ago named into Forbes' list of the world's billionaires, was scrambling to save his empire, which rose out of nowhere in less than 10 years to corner the diesel market in a country that relies almost exclusively on diesel generators to power homes and businesses.

The bankers, many of whom had recklessly shoveled money at their friends with scant due diligence during the go-go years of a compliant Central Bank under Chukwuma Soludo, thumbed through the document and sighed, promising to get back to Mr. Otedola soonest.

But few were impressed, and Mr. Otedola's situation appears hopeless.

"You look at the cash flow projections of the borrower and, if he can repay, you reschedule the loan, and if not, you bite the bullet and unwind the business," said the chief executive of one of the banks involved.

"It will require real commercial genius on his part to be able to suddenly come up with N50 billion in annual profits. Or if he can get the government to bail him out," the source said. "We just don't see it."

Reached in the early hours of Friday by telephone in Lagos, Mr. Otedola denied that his empire was teetering.

"It's all rubbish; it's complete rubbish, it's not true at all, it's all rumour," Mr. Otedola insisted. "How can we be insolvent when we are still importing diesel in very large volume."

A senior official with AP who insisted on not being named said it is totally outrageous and illegal that banks can disclose financial information about their clients to the press. This, according to him, violates confidentiality agreements which are central to the relationship between clients and banks.

The official also said that there is nothing unusual about restructuring a debt. ‘‘The magnitude of the debt is not the issue, it is the assets the debts finance that is important, and whether there is adequate cover for the debt,'' he said.

He added that there is no big company in the world today that is not indebted.

Earlier that same day the mood was remarkably cheerful inside Lagos Civic Centre, where African Petroleum was holding its 30th Annual General Meeting. One after the other, shareholders saluted management for the great job done in running their company. Even the lone contrarian in the hall, Lona Awo, a shareholder, hardly managed to ruffle a feather. Why was the company's brilliant achievement in the oil market, Mr. Awo asked, only matched by a dismal showing in the grease market? What is the real problem with Access Bank?

In reality, however, AP shareholders were sitting on a company ravaged by debt. In 2007, when Zenon Oil and Mr. Otedola acquired controlling shares in AP, the company had a N1 billion debt profile. Today, with Mr. Otedola as chief executive, the debt has ballooned to N50 billion.

Tunde Falasinu, AP's Chief Operating Officer, and Company Secretary, Elizabeth Obiajulu Idigbe, was at hand to shore up the responses of their CEO, Mr. Otedola.

Ms. Idigbe dutifully defended her company, saying it was in fact a victim of Access Bank's treachery.

The corporate illness of AP, financial analysts told NEXT last week in Lagos, points starkly to the total failure of regulation in the industry today and the risk that a new generation of CEOs, pose to the security of the Nigerian financial system, shareholders' investment and the integrity of the Nigerian investment environment.

Knowledgeable industry sources worried at the situation at AP locate the bulk of the problem in the cowboy sensibilities of core investors, and the prevalent practice of share manipulation that has until now drawn no reprisals from regulators who are typically compromised.

Currently, the Central Bank, under its new governor, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, is cracking the whip and insisting that rules be followed and disclosures made. The banks, in turn, have piled the pressure on their biggest debtors. In addition to Access, GTB also announced that it was dragging the troubled Virgin Nigeria Airways to court to recover billions of naira in unpaid debt.

The son rises

When Mr. Otedola bought his luxury yacht in 2008, it was a symbol of a sort of baptism. The 80-foot boat was parked ostentatiously in front of the Zenon headquarters, visible to the more modest members of the Lagos Boat Club across the lagoon. The yacht proudly proclaimed his membership of the elite club of Nigeria's nouveau riche. His subsequent inclusion in the 2009 Forbes billionaire list affirmed his place in the world's exclusive billionaires' club.

Mr. Otedola may not be the richest man alive today, but his trajectory to the pinnacle of wealth is a peculiarly Nigerian tale of making the impossible possible in the shortest imaginable time; it took him just a decade to scale the spires of the financial world.

Born into an influential but modestly well-off family, his father, Michael Otedola, was a one-time governor of Lagos State and a printer.

The young Otedola has moved with dizzying speed from a near standstill position to create an empire that, until now, was thought to be worth several billion dollars. While his signature company, Zenon Petroleum and Gas, could ultimately earn him a place as a player in Nigeria's oil and gas downstream sector, two critical considerations came to define the quick rise of the 42-year old billionaire.

Aliko Dangote, the 51-year old fellow billionaire who has acted until recently as an entrepreneurial lodestar for Mr. Otedola; and his own early decision on financial investment in support of presidential politics in Nigeria.

According to those knowledgeable about the inner workings of the Obasanjo presidency, Mr. Otedola who was just a regular petroleum product agent in 1999 played merely at the margin to the median zone of the oil and gas merchandising until he encountered a dramatic breakthrough at the emergence of the Obasanjo presidency.

Scorned and alienated by the mainstream of Yoruba elites, the early Obasanjo inner circle was marked by a stark absence of young influential upwardly mobile Yoruba elites. According to one member of that circle who spoke to us anonymously in Abuja, "the decision was reached to bring Femi (Otedola) inside, since all his fundamentals were neat and acceptable to all [the young power monguls around Obasanjo]."

"In fairness too, Mr. Otedola helped matters greatly with his ubiquitous presence at the Villa and his generous contributions to many of the Obasanjo programmes," remarked our source. Mr. Otedola placed himself in a position of favour with the Obasanjo administration, and before Mr. Obasanjo concluded his two terms in office, Mr. Otedola had benefitted from the privatisation bid on five different government- owned companies.

The insider as dealmaker

Mr. Otedola explains his business philosophy as a decision to "invest our money here to create job opportunities for people. Nobody is going to take the money outside the country" but a review of his pattern of investment speaks unmistakably of a preference for blue chip investment in tax havens of the world. NEXT investigations discovered Mr. Otedola's business footprint in tax havens like the Isle of Man and Guernsey. Curiously too, he recently moved his assets offshore, including to the tiny Central American nation of Belize.

On the local scene however, Mr. Otedola's 2007 acquisition of African Petroleum (AP), a public quoted company, in what local stock brokers variously characterise as a ‘high level manoeuvring deal', placed him on the fastest track to his current prosperity. Five years of friendship with Mr. Obasanjo gave Mr. Otedola the pedestal to climb towards other state institutions. One of such was the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation,

"Otedola had access to NNPC products because of his closeness to government," remarked an industry source last week, who also added that "It was done in such a way that you could not hold NNPC to some of these practices because there is no law that says that NNPC must give equal amount of products to all the marketers. They do so at their discretion."

Mr. Otedola smartly blunted any prospect for criticism regarding his role in the oil and gas arena, through a populist marketing principle that allowed him to sell at government recommended rates. Invariably, his famous but relatively inexpensive petroleum product prices have triggered a whispering campaign in the petroleum marketing industry where competitors level wide but largely unsubstantiated allegations of improper business ethics against him.

Oluwole Oluleye, the Executive Secretary of the Petroleum Products Pricing and Regulatory Agency (PPPRA), acknowledged sharp market practices among petroleum marketers but refused to be drawn into any specifics regarding Mr. Otedola or any actor's role. Mr. Oluleye is currently on suspension for what many of his colleagues describe as his campaign for transparency and ethics in the market.

"The agency that I headed made sure that we minimized the malpractices that were going on in the industry as much as possible. Some people played pranks but we minimised it as much as possible," Mr. Oluwole said.

Otedola's expanding business was the direct result of his growing relevance in the downstream sector. Zenon Oil and AP's clientele increased as national delivery systems of energy products failed. Thus, multinationals and big businesses, frustrated by Nigeria's inadequate power supply found in Mr. Otedola, a man who provided products at a comparatively reduced cost. Thus, Zenon came to boast of such customers as MTN, Cadbury, Siemens, Pepsi, Procter and Gamble, and Nestle.

With time, Mr. Otedola ventured into the shipping business, earning him the presidency of the Nigerian Shippers Association. One of the country's biggest ship owners, he owns four cargo ships: MT Sir Michael, MT Lady Doje, MT Nana, named after his father, mother and wife respectively.

With wealth also came flamboyance: Mr. Otedola christened his fourth cargo ship: the ‘Zenon Conquest.'

Together with his wife, Nana, Mr. Otedola's investments, by last year's count, straddle 16 individual companies, five of which were registered in Europe. In the oil services sector, Zenon's huge storage capacity of about 150,000 metric tonnes gives it the largest single storage capacity in the country.

Wealth brought comfort and a lavish lifestyle for Mr. Otedola, which he kept afloat with a more than generous practice of public philanthropy. Under the aegis of Friends of Obasanjo and Atiku, he donated N25 million to the rehabilitation of the national mosque in Abuja, and doled out N200 million to the Obasanjo Presidential Library Project. He also shelled out N150 million in aid of Obasanjo's re-election expenses, but nothing came close to his recent blockbuster at the ruling People's Democratic Party fundraising event for its secretariat project, where his N1 billion donation took care of 10 percent of the projected cost of the building.

Shadowboxing a former close confidant

The first indication of trouble in Otedola's blue skies came several months ago with the increasingly bitter and low-blow fight with his erstwhile friend and business partner, Aliko Dangote. The same man who helped plot Mr. Otedola's rise was now determined to help hasten his decline. It all began when Mr. Dangote's cousin, Sulayi Dantata, some say acting for Mr. Dangote, purchased controlling shares in Chevron, a company coveted by Mr. Otedola.

The diesel king felt betrayed by what he perceived as the wily sleight of hand by Mr. Dangote. Matters escalated with claims that Nova Securities, a stock brokerage, engaged in share price manipulation to undermine the viability of AP- allegedly at the behest of Mr. Dangote. (Mr. Dangote has denied any involvement.) The deflating share price severely impaired Mr. Otedola's net worth and his ability to service his many large lines of credit with local banks.

Access denied

In the middle of this nasty squabble came Access Bank, some of whose directors are close to Mr. Otedola.

Last year, Access extended a trading line of $100 million (N15 billion,) out of which he used up the $35 million. The note was due in 90 days, late last year, by which time, the price of oil had tumbled as the international financial crisis hit. By January, a barrel of oil had collapsed in price from nearly $150 to less than $35. Mr. Otedola was in trouble.

According to bankers and other industry watchers, Mr. Otedola became blinded by his fight with his former friend and fellow Forbes billionaire, Mr. Dangote. "He saw the hand of Dangote everywhere," said one senior banking industry official.

Mr. Otedola accused Access Bank of acting in concert with his arch enemy to destroy him. According to court papers, Access executives, unable to persuade him to pay, applied for permission to unwind AP.

The genie was out of the bottle.

Late last week, after the initial public feuding, NEXT learned that both parties had commenced dialogue through intermediaries, seeking a deal. Negotiations are ongoing.