Board of Directors of Transnational Corporation of Nigeria Plc (Transcorp), has announced the appointment of Mr Tajudeen Folabi Adeola, as the Group Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer for the mega corporation. Fola Adeola was the pioneering MD of Guaranty Trust Bank Plc. In a statement in Lagos yesterday, Chairman Transcorp and Director General of the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE), Dr Ndi Okereke-Onyiuke, said by the new appointment, Adeola has become the first substantive Group Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of the Transnational Corporation of Nigeria Plc.

She also announced the appointment of Mr Nicholas Okoye as the Group Executive Director, Operations, with responsibilities for Group Operations, Strategy and Business Development.

“Adeola had his early education at the Yaba College of Technology, where he obtained a Diploma in Accounting in 1975, and became a Chartered Accountant in 1980. He went on to gain valuable finance and accounting experience working with such world-renowned Institutions as Deloitte, Haskins and Sells etc. Fola, along with others founded the Guaranty Trust Bank Plc (GTB) in 1990, where a small start up bank was grown from an initial asset base of N25 million to the financial power house it is today, with total assets well over N167 billion,” Okereke-Onyiuke said.

Fola also served as GTB’s pioneer Managing Director for a period of 12 years, during which he saw to its rapid growth in Nigeria as well as in other markets in Africa. He presided over the transition of GTB from a privately held company to a public institution, with its successful listing on the Nigerian Stock Exchange in 1996. Due to his commitment to further contribute to Nigeria’s development, he led in the effort to institute reforms in the nation’s pension system.

Fola served as the Chairman of the Pension Reform Committee, which designed and anchored the New Pension Reform Bill 2004, which is guiding the emergence of a new Pension Industry in Nigeria. He presently serves as the Chairman of the National Pension Commission, the regulator in the Pension Industry.

According to Okereke-Onyiuke, Adeola was recently appointed a Commissioner to the now famed Tony Blair Commission for Africa that has produced a report which is expected to serve as a blue print for the World’s Poverty Reduction Plan. Fola compliments a very successful career in banking and finance with extensive training in World Renowned Institutions such as the Harvard Business School, INSEAD and the International Institute for Management Development. Okereke-Onyiuke further recalled that President Olusegun Obasanjo decorated Adeola with the distinguished national award of Officer of the Federal Republic (OFR) for outstanding service to Nationhood in December, 2002.

Fola Adeola is now expected to pilot the day to day activities of the New Corporation and deliver on its Mission to build World Class production Facilities, sited in Nigeria, Owned by Nigerians, and managed by Nigerians. Born in January 1954, he is married to Hajara and they have four Children.