Business News of Friday, 14 March 2025

Source: www.legit.ng

Nigeria produces another billionaire to join Dangote, Rabiu, Adenuga, others

L-R: Aliko Dangote, Abdul Samad Rabiu, and Tony Elumelu L-R: Aliko Dangote, Abdul Samad Rabiu, and Tony Elumelu

MoneyCentral has estimated that Tony Elumelu, a Nigerian business magnate, currently has a net worth of $2.15 billion.

These figures are based on the businessman's stakes, which have increased significantly in recent years.

Elumelu may be worth little more than $2 billion, according to MoneyCentral's estimates of his holdings, which mostly consist of Heirs Holdings and his direct and indirect investments in publicly traded companies such as United Bank for Africa (UBA) and Transnational Corporation of Nigeria (Transcorp).

Breakdown of Tony Elumelu’s business stakes

Via HH Capital Limited, Heirs Holdings Limited, and personal/family assets, the Nigerian business billionaire has a large share in Transcorp.

His family's ownership amounted to 35.93%, or 3.652 billion shares, as of 2024.

Elumelu is the indirect owner of 68,386,431 shares in Heirs Holdings Limited, while HH Capital Limited is the indirect owner of 2,997,789,337 shares.

An additional 68,276,011 are held directly. “Transcorp’s shares have surged from a reconstructed share price of N5.16 in March 2023 to N51 per share on March 10th, 2025.

"The total market capitalization of Transcorp as of Monday, March 10th, was N523.8 billion,” MoneyCentral states.



Additionally, Tony Elumelu owns 7.43% of United Bank of Africa (UBA).

Elumelu owns 2.3467 billion indirect shares of the bank's 34.2 billion outstanding shares, which include 195.12 million direct shares and HH Capital Limited (302.29 million shares), Heirs Holdings Limited (1.814 billion shares), and Heirs Alliance Limited (231 million shares).

As of March 10, 2025, UBA's share price was N37.60, up from N23 per share in March 2023. “UBA’s market capitalisation is N1.286 trillion, meaning Tony Elumelu has a stake worth N95.54 billion or $63.69 million (at N1500/$),”

MoneyCentral states. “UBA’s gross earnings rose significantly in the 9-months 2024 period by 83.2 per cent to N2.398 trillion up from N1.308 trillion recorded in September 2023,” it adds.

These are used in conjunction with other investments like real estate, as well as holdings in Heirs Holding, Transcorp Hotels Plc, Heirs Energies, Heirs Insurance Group (Heirs Insurance, Heirs Life Assurance), and United Capital Plc.

A breakdown of the calculations is as below:



Transcorp PLC: $125 million
UBA: $63.69 million
Heirs Energies: $1.75 billion
Heirs Insurance: $28 million
United Capital: $61.5 million
Real Estate: $75 million
Cash: $50 million

As presently constituted, neither of the two leading real-time billionaire indexes have updated Tony Elumelu’s net worth.

Even though Tony Elumelu was valued at $1 billion by Forbes in 2014, the Nigerian billionaire's net worth is currently estimated to be $700 million.

With a net worth of $28.1 billion as of the time of this report, Aliko Dangote is still the only Nigerian on Bloomberg's billionaire index.

Nigerian billionaire Tony Elumelu shares why he diversified

Legit.ng reported that Nigerian billionaire, and chairman of the United Bank for Africa (UBA) Group Tony Elumelu, has shared his reasons for diversifying into the oil and gas sector.

Elumelu shared this at the Legacy Builders Palm Beach Conference held in Florida, United States, on the theme: “Democratising Luck”.

He observed that Africa is a continent of opportunity, and Nigeria has huge resources to plug into this opportunity but power remains a challenge to be surmounted.