Biodun Dabiri, who is currently the Chairman of Radix Capital Partners, is a consummate corporate finance specialist who has handled some of the largest and most complex transactions in the Nigerian Capital Markets over a period spanning 35 years. He has been involved in the conceptualization, capitalization and restructuring of a wide variety of ideas and Companies. He cut his teeth in the investment banking space while in the then NAL Merchant Bank, (the first Merchant bank in Nigeria established in 1960) where at a time, he was in charge of the bank’s corporate finance department that actively participated in the financial reforms in the 1980s’ which resulted in the indigenization, privatization and commercialization of Government enterprises and ultimate listing of those entities on the Nigerian Stock Exchange.
Biodun, in conjunction with a group of investors, packaged the corporate spin-off of Guaranty Trust Bank Plc’s shareholding in Magnum Trust Bank Plc (now part of Sterling Bank Plc) and co-managed the bank between 1999 and 2007.
Pursuant to the Nigerian banking consolidation directives, he put together the investment banking competencies of the banks that merged into Sterling Bank Plc to form Sterling Capital Market, which he managed until his resignation in 2008, having played a prominent role in the merger and acquisition of corporates, local and offshore fund raising activities consummated during the first and second rounds of the financial sector consolidation exercises.
In 2008, he spearheaded the formation of Radix Capital Partners, a Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) licensed investment banking boutique, which to date has assisted Federal Government agencies (AMCON), State Governments and Corporations in the issuance of over N6.5trillion in debt and equity instruments.
Biodun is a 1977 graduate of the University of Ibadan, a fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria, having trained with Deloitte, Haskins & Sells (now Deloitte Touche) Chartered Accountants. He is a fellow of the Chartered Institute of Stockbrokers and a dealing member of the Nigerian Stock Exchange. He was a member of the Board of Central Securities Clearing System (CSCS) – the central depository of the Nigerian Capital Market, which he helped midwife. He has also served on numerous boards, including Sterling Bank Plc, Magnum Trust Bank Plc, Nigerian Stockbrokers Ltd, Protea Hotel, and others in the hospitality, manufacturing and health care sectors.
Within the Free Trade Zone itself is the Lekki Deep Sea Port LFTZ, which he equally chairs, having acted as the project’s transaction adviser. Voted by Thomson Reuters’ Project Finance International (PFI) as the African Infrastructure Deal of the year 2019, Lekki Port is Nigeria’s first and one of West Africa’s largest deep-sea ports, serving as a significant gateway for global trade.
