Business News
Is Forte Oil Plc considering changing its name following acquisition?
There are strong indications that the new management and board of Forte Oil Plc may soon change the company’s name as part of its restructuring.
There are strong indications that the new management and board of Forte Oil Plc may soon change the company’s name as part of a strategic rebranding process.
In a chit-chat with some journalists, yesterday, the company’s newly-appointed Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Olumide Adeosun, noted that the current name is personal and may very likely be changed.
“The name FO is actually personal to an individual and that individual has sold his shares and it’s very likely that we are going to rebrand.” – Adeosun
[READ MORE: Femi Otedola considering the purchase of assets from Forte Oil]
At the moment, it is unclear if the new majority owners of Forte Oil Plc will maintain the name or eventually change it.
Forte Oil HQ
Recall that on Wednesday, June 19, Femi Otedola announced his exit from Forte Oil Plc, after receiving full payment for the sale of the company to Prudent Energy Services Ltd.
The company’s previous transformations: Forte Oil Plc was initially incorporated in 1964 as British Petroleum Nigeria Limited. After 14 years in operation, it changed its status from a private limited liability company to a public liability company.
- In 1977, 40% of the company’s shares were sold to Nigerians in compliance with the provisions of the Nigerian Enterprises Promotion Decree of 1977.
- A year later 60% was acquired by the Federal Government of Nigeria in favour of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC).
- In November 1979 the name British Petroleum was changed to African Petroleum PLC.
- NNPC’s stake in AP was reduced by 20% in March 1989 after the Federal Government sold the above percentage to Nigerian Citizens, increasing their stake from 40% to 60%.
- In the year 2000, the Federal Government under its privatization programme divested its remaining 40% to core investors and interested Nigerians.
Business
CBN includes sugar, wheat on FX restriction list
The CBN is set to include sugar and wheat in the forex restriction list.
Profiles
Atsu Davoh is building ways for Africans to easily acquire and spend cryptocurrency
Atsu Davoh has gone from failed projects to running one of Ghana’s most innovative startups.
In recent times, the tech space in Africa has experienced immense growth, with the introduction of several key players and disruptors across various sectors. One sector that is also rising is the cryptocurrency space with Africa experiencing greater crypto ownership and trade volume.
The number of Bitcoins processed on a single day reached its highest value at the beginning of 2021, as more people displayed interest in the cryptocurrency. Due to its fast adoption, more fintech players have created platforms that have made trading with cryptocurrency easier. One of such players is Atsu Davoh who calls himself the “product guy.”
Atsu Davoh dropped out of college (Carleton College) in the United States and moved back to Ghana to help innovate on Africa’s financial infrastructure. Atsu first discovered Bitcoin in 2017 during the first boom when it became mainstream. Before then, he and his co-founder Samuel Baohen had been involved in many failed projects.
He developed a USSD system where people could buy bitcoin through their phone numbers, like tying crypto to phone numbers in a native way. This was one of the first iterations of Bitsika.
Atsu was invited to Join Binance Labs Incubator by Yele Bademosi where he got $150,000 after graduating from the incubator. Bitsika went on to raise around $900,000 from investors. This brought the total seed raised to $1,050,000.
This USSD system worked in Ghana but didn’t work in Nigeria. Atsu and his team then pivoted the platform to a donation crowdfunding platform, which allowed people living in other countries to send donations to African nationals in need of the funds before finally building it into a cross-border crypto remittance platform.
Bitsika users can deposit and remit money across multiple currencies using the app, with all monies deposited in Bitsika stored in USD credits or stable-coin.
Bitsika has over 50,000+ downloads on Playstore and processed nearly $40 million in 2020 with $18,872,474 in deposits, $17,890,807 in payouts (withdrawals), and $3,189,834 in internal peer-to-peer transfers.
Despite a few unfavourable regulations surrounding cryptocurrency in Africa, the market has shown no signs of slowing down as more people are building products that will make trading seamless.
