Recession removes Otedola from Forbes’ billionaire list

Forbes latest ranking of the world’s richest people has shown that Nigerian business mogul, Mr. Femi Otedola has been removed from Forbes list of billionaires as his net worth has plunged from $1.8 billion to $550 million.

This is as result of recession which has marked down the stock value of his company, Forte Oil, a Nigerian Stock Exchange-listed petroleum marketing company.

Forte Oil’s closed trade transactions on Friday at year-on-year low of N145 ($0.44) per share from an all-time high of N342 ($1.1) in March this year when FORBES published its annual ranking of the world’s richest people.

In addition to this,  Otedola’s fortune has also been adversely affected by  the devaluation of the Naira. In dollar terms, the devaluation in addition to Forte’s floundering share price has knocked about $1.3 billion off the value of Otedola’s fortune which was pegged at $1.8 billion in March.

Otedola, who is Forte Oil Plc’s Chairman, is now worth only $550 million as at the close of business of Friday, according to the FORBES’ billionaires’ database.

An analyst at a Lagos-based investment bank hinted that the share price drop may not be unconnected to the current recession in Nigeria that has witnessed 2 consecutive quarters of negative growth with inflation soaring to levels as high as 17per cent.

Investors are said to be dumping Forte Oil’s shares as a result of wide-spread disappointing results of almost all the companies listed on The Exchange.

For instance, Forte Oil’s profit after tax was down at N2.80 billion ($8.8 million) for the third quarter ended Sept 30 2016 as against N4.28 billion ($13.5 million) for the same period in 2015.

The decline in fortune is said to be connected to reduced demand for energy consumption as a result of the recently increased pump price of petroleum products which has adversely affected the fortunes of oil marketing companies in the country.