Unbelievable: Read how Nigerian oil billionaire lost $400m in just nine weeks
– Nigerian billionaire drops in Forbes ranking for top billionaires
– Source at the company says it is a temporary incident, maintains that they would bounce back soon
Reports say Femi Otedola, Nigerian business mogul, has lost more than $400 million in the past nine weeks.
According to Vanguard, Otedola’s loss of his personal fortune came as a result of a 43.5% shed off in stock price of Forte Oil, the Nigerian-listed energy behemoth he controls.
The share price of Forte Oil hit an all-time high of N342 per share as at February ending after the Lagos-based utilities and petroleum marketing company released its impressive 2015 FY results and a declaration of an attractive dividend of N3.45 per share.
But as at the close of trading on Tuesday, May 3, its share price has dropped to N193.46 after recording consistent daily losses over the past few weeks.
Otedola, Forte oil’s controlling shareholder, has dropped in the world’s top billionaires’ list with a drop from $1.6 billion in March, to $1.2 billion.
Speaking on the reason for the recent changes, an anonymous source in the oil company informed that the drop is due to massive sell-offs of bonus shares from some of the company’s retail investors.
The source said: “This is only temporary. As you’ll see, even though investors are selling off their bonus shares, there are institutional investors who are buying up all the shares on offer as evidenced by the volume of the transactions in the last few days.
“When all those bonus shares are cleared up by institutional investors, you’ll see the share price rising again.”
Otedola reportedly got about 170 million out of the 216 million bonus shares which have been issued.
Forte oil which has the primary function of distributing petroleum products such as diesel, aviation fuel and Premium Motor Spirit (PMS), has over 500 company-owned, dealer-assisted and dealer-developed gas stations spread across the country.
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