Adesola Adeduntan – Nigeria’s Top 10 CEO’S 2017

Known for his sound business ethic, transformational business leadership and hands-on approach to corporate values, culture and employee engagement, Adesola Adeduntan needs little or no introduction. Sola holds the reins at Nigeria’s premier banking group, First Bank of Nigeria Limited and its subsidiaries as the Chief Executive officer/ Managing Director since January 2016. Prior to that, he was the group’s Chief Financial Officer and an executive director, holding those positions since July 2014.

He took over the leadership of the premier bank in Nigeria at a time when it had reached 121 years of existence. The period was characterised by challenging operating environments, high NPL numbers and large impairment charges. His immediate response was to implement aggressive cost control measures and commence a proactive and robust remediation of challenged loan portfolio via a complete overhaul of the Bank’s credit risk management framework. He has also progressively championed transformational processes through the Bank’s Enterprise-wide Risk Management and resource planning projects, both aiming at increased process and operational efficiency, productivity and reduced risk exposures with enhanced risk management governance and integration across functions and geographies.

Under Adesola’s leadership, the Bank has recorded immense success across several indices in the Nigerian Banking industry especially in the digital and transaction banking space. FirstBank was named the first financial service institution in Nigeria and the West Africa sub-region to have issued 10 million cards, making the bank one of only two banks in Africa to have achieved this feat.  FirstBank also became the first financial institution to achieve sustained channel transaction volumes of 100 million transactions between Dec 2015 and May 2016. In addition, the Bank has been named the “Most Valuable Bank Brand in Nigeria” by the globally renowned “The Banker Magazine” of the Financial Times Group, for six consecutive times.

Dr. Adeduntan has in less than two years at the helm of affairs in FirstBank, successfully managed the Bank’s impairment while continuing to improve the quality of risk assets, products and service offerings and its technology infrastructure, repositioning the bank for growth/profitability and increased investor confidence. Adesola began his career with Afribank Nigeria Plc in 1994, after which he worked with KPMG  Professional Services, Citibank Nigeria, and the Africa Finance Corporation (AFC) before joining FirstBank in July 2014. He currently sits as a non-executive director on the boards of the Nigeria Interbank Settlement System (NIBSS), Africa Finance Corporation (AFC), FBN Bank U.K. Ltd., Universal Payments Plc., and FMDQ OTC Securities Exchange.

Adesola is also a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria.


For his ability to raise the performance of the bank since his appointment, Adeduntan is named one of the top 10 CEOs of the year, 2017 by Top 10 Magazine.