People walk at the entrance of an Ecobank bank in Abidjan, Ivory Coast. REUTERS/Luc Gnago Since he was appointed chairman of the board of directors of Ecobank at the end of June, the way Alain Francis Nkontchou, 57, speaks has not changed in substance. The former investment banker, co-founder of asset manager Enko Capital, expects the financial sector to support African economies better.
“Banks need to become more agile,” he says: to lend over the longer term (beyond five years), to assess risks better, to not just take assets as collateral and to integrate cashflow into their analyses, etc. “We need to be more flexible,” he says.
It is with Ecobank’s Nigerian CEO, Ade Ayeyemi, that he intends to complete the transformation of the pan-African group, which began five years ago. On the agenda: developing digital technology, improving services, turning the Nigerian subsidiary around once and for all, focusing on education and health, and, in the medium term, distributing dividends to shareholders, who have been deprived of them for four years in a row.
In addition to his skills and international experience, the Cameroonian, who has long worked in the quiet and very lucrative world of investment banking , will bring to Ecobank’s staff the benefit of a network of specialists in global finance. International financiers
He holds a PhD from Supelec and a master’s degree in finance from the École Supérieure de Commerce de Paris . He worked in the trading rooms of JP Morgan and then Credit Suisse , speculating on currency, commodity prices and macroeconomic conditions.
During this period, he was in close contact with the Argentinean Daniel Pinto, now co-president and chief operating officer of JP Morgan, and became friends with Gaël de Boissard, founder of the investment company 2b Capital, who, before Tidjane Thiam’s arrival at Crédit Suisse, had hoped to become head of the Swiss bank.
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Nkontchou has also forged strong friendships with ex-traders Jean-Philippe Blochet, co-founder of the Braven Howard hedge fund, and Alexandre Mouradian, formerly of the brokerage firm Tradition Securities & Futures, who has since set up the Spinoza Foundation and devotes himself to his passion for the painting school in Pont-Aven (Brittany, France).
In the 1990s, Nkontchou also became close to the French De Nonancourt family, which owns the Laurent-Perrier champagne house, which has a strong presence in Africa. From […]
