Hakeem Belo-Osagie was born in 1955 in Lagos to Professor Tiamiyu Belo-Osagie, a gynaecologist, and Iyalekitue Bazuaye, a nurse, and traces his family roots to Benin City, Edo State.
He studied law at Cambridge, earned an MA in Politics, Philosophy and Economics from Oxford, and completed an MBA at Harvard Business School, before returning to Nigeria to work as a special assistant to the Minister of Petroleum and Energy.
In 1992 Belo-Osagie founded First Securities Discount House, and in 1998 he acquired a controlling stake in the government-owned United Bank for Africa, becoming the first Nigerian to stage a hostile corporate takeover before building the bank to profitability as its chairman.
Belo-Osagie went on to chair the board of Etisalat Nigeria, controlling a significant stake in the telecoms operator until stepping aside in 2017, and has since chaired Metis Capital Partners and Duval Properties, a real estate company developing a district at Jabi Lake, Abuja.
He and his wife, lawyer Dr Myma Belo-Osagie, are among the largest donors to the African Leadership Academy in Johannesburg, and Forbes listed him among Africa's wealthiest people, with an estimated net worth of $600 million in 2014.
- Staged Nigeria's first hostile corporate takeover, acquiring the United Bank for Africa in 1998
- Founded First Securities Discount House, now FSDH Merchant Bank
- Chaired Etisalat Nigeria, controlling a significant stake in the telecoms operator
- Chairman of Metis Capital Partners and Duval Properties
- Among the largest donors to the African Leadership Academy
- Bold moves can rewrite the rules of an industry. Belo-Osagie's 1998 takeover of a state-owned bank was unprecedented in Nigerian business at the time.
- Philanthropy can be built into a business career, not added after it. His decades-long support of the African Leadership Academy ran alongside his banking and telecoms work, not after it.