>The influential Time magazine included him in it’s “2002 Global Influentials” list of the 15 most-promising young executives, while Fortune business magazine, ranked him as the “Seventh Most Powerful Black Executive” in the United States. After bagging a law degree and Masters in Business Administration at Harvard, he served as a law clerk for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall from 1980 to 1983. He was the first non-American ever to be employed as a clerk at the US highest court. He has been described as an innovative investment banker who arranged financing for $20 billion worth of industrial projects in a career that has spanned over 20 years with Credit Suisse First Boston (CSFB). In 2002, he became the head of CSFB’s global investment banking division with 1,200 bankers and $2.8 billion in assets under his watch. Meet Adebayo Ogunlesi, the King’s College, Lagos old boy who bought London Gatwick Airport for a whopping £1.5 billion…
A Nigerian in ‘’exile’’ who attended King’s College, Lagos Island, has surpassed all expectations by buying on behalf of his investment firm, London Gatwick Airport. Adebayo Ogunlesi was dubbed ‘bookworm’ by his mates whilst at King’s College. Little wonder, he graduated with a Grade 1 Distinction from the secondary, Nigeria’s best at the time. Today, his firm is the proud owner of the UK’s second largest airport. It cost the firm a whopping £1.5 billion to acquire same from the British Airports Authority (BAA Limited). The elated Ogunlesi described the acquisition of Gatwick as a landmark deal. ”We see significant scope to apply both our strong operational focus and our knowledge of the airports sector to make Gatwick an airport of choice.” In an exclusive interview with Jeff Randall of Sky News, Ogunlesi said he is going “to make Gatwick a truly first class experience”. However he cautioned it would take “somewhere between 12 and 18 months” before passengers started noticing a difference at the airport. Ogunlesi said the UK’s strong regulatory framework and attractive assets made “Britain a wonderful place to invest”. “We love Britain,” Ogunlesi added. The airport was previously run by BAA, which posted a pre-tax loss of over £780m in the first nine months of last year. BAA said it lost £225 million on Gatwick after being forced to sell the airport by the Competition Commission.
Ogunlesi who has lived in New York for over 20 years, is currently Chairman and Managing Partner of Global Infrastructure Partners (GIP), a $5.64 billion joint venture formed by Credit Suisse and General Electric. He says he cultivates his ties with Nigeria by informally advising the Federal Government of Nigeria on privatisation. Prior to his current role, he was Executive Vice Chairman and Chief Client Officer of Credit Suisse, based in New York. He previously served as a member of Credit Suisse’s Executive Board and Management Council and chaired the Chairman’s Board. Previously, he was the Global Head of Investment Banking at Credit Suisse. Ogunlesi built First Boston’s project-finance business into the world’s largest by using “money-spinning innovations” (New York, May 27, 2002) such as off-balance sheet financing and raising money through public debt markets. The job involved advising clients on strategic transactions in a broad range of industries. He worked on transactions in North and South America, the Caribbean, Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia. Prior to joining Credit Suisse, Ogunlesi was a lawyer in the corporate practice group of the New York law firm of Cravath, Swaine & Moore.
Rewind to his school days. After his stinct with King’s College, Ogunlesi travelled to the UK where he received his B.A. with first class honors in Philosophy, Politics and Economics, from Oxford University (1976). In the USA, he bagged his J.D. magna cum laude, from Harvard Law School (1978) and his M.B.A. from the Harvard Business School (1979). He is a member of the Washington DC Bar Association. He was a lecturer at Harvard Law School and Yale School of Organization and Management, where he taught a course on transnational investment projects in emerging countries. At Harvard, he was accepted by the school as one of three foreign students in his class, even though the school did not usually admit students who had been born and educated outside the United States at the time. Ogunlesi and W. Randy Eaddy became the first two editors of African descent to serve together on the prestigious Harvard Law Review. Although he did not intend to pursue a business career, he thought that courses in finance would help him overcome his fear of numbers. After graduating from Harvard, Ogunlesi served as a law clerk for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall from 1980 to 1983. He was the first non-American ever to clerk at the US highest court. He is married to Amelia Quist (optometrist) and they are blessed with two children. He recently received a prestigious award: Seventh Most Powerful Black Executive in the USA. Ogunlesi was born in Lagos in 1953, the son of the first Nigerian-born professor of medicine to earn tenure at a medical school in his own country.
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