President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has appointed the former Commissioner of Finance in Lagos State, Wale Edun, as the Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy.
This is contained in a statement issued by the Special Adviser to the President on Media and Publicity, Ajuri Ngelale, on Wednesday evening.
Edun, who was a Presidential Adviser on Monetary Policies, was part of the first batch of the 28-man ministerial list that was sent to the Senate by President Bola Tinubu.
Wale Edun’s background
Wale Edun has career experience that spans merchant banking, corporate finance, economics and international finance at national and international levels. He is an economist, with both first and Master’s Degrees in Economics, from the University of London and the University of Sussex, England.
Edun worked at Chase Merchant Bank as the Head of Treasury and then as Deputy Head of Corporate Finance. These positions put him in charge of the bank’s Treasury and Money Market activities. He was responsible for the Capital Market and Financial Advisory operations and had to represent several local subsidiaries and affiliates of major multinational companies.
While still at Chase Merchant Bank, he was seconded to the Wall Street firms of Lehman Brothers and Chase Manhattan Capital Markets Corporation in New York, USA. By 1980, Edun was sent down to work at Chase Merchant Bank (later Continental) in Lagos, Nigeria and he worked there till 1986.
In September 1986, Wale Edun joined the World Bank/IFC in Washington DC, USA through the elite Young Professionals program in September 1986, allowing him to further broaden his international experience. He worked on economic and financial packages for some countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, including the Dominican Republic and Trinidad as well as Indonesia and India in the Far East.
Three years later, in 1989, he returned to Nigeria as Co-Founder and Executive Director of Investment Banking & Trust Company Limited (now Stanbic IBTC Plc).
Entrepreneurship
In 1994, Wale Edun decided to apply his decades of experience differently and he founded Denham Management Limited. Edun has served as Chairman of Chapel Hill Denham Group since March 2008. Chapel Hill Denham is a prominent independent investment banking, securities trading, and investment management firm.
The group is focused on providing unbiased advisory, execution, and investment services to corporations, governments, institutions, and individuals involved in investing in and developing Nigeria and Africa.
Chapel Hill Denham Group has also been actively targeting sectors such as Infrastructure, Energy and Renewables, Real Estate, SMEs, Digital and Financial Inclusion, Healthcare, and Education, among others. The firm has received significant recognitions and awards, including Africa’s Best Bank for Advisory in the Euromoney Awards 2016 – 2019.
Wale Edun also sits on the Board of several other companies.
Public Service Career
In 1999, the then Lagos State Governor, Senator Bola Ahmed Tinubu (who is now Nigeria’s President) appointed Wale Edun as Honourable Commissioner for Finance in Lagos State. He held this office for a total of eight years.
During his tenure, the administration increased the internal revenue of the state by 469 percent, to N6.9 billion monthly, thus reviving the dwindling economy.
On March 28, 2023, Boss Mustapha, the then Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF) and Chairman of the Presidential Transition Council (PTC) announced Wale Edun as a member of the Presidential Transition Council (PTC).