Unlike several other senior Nigerian financial figures, Mustafa Chike-Obi does not have a reputation for pretentiousness. Yet he did insist on one particular perk when he became head of the Asset Management Corporation of Nigeria (Amcon) on its creation in 2010. “I asked for a big office,” he tells The Banker in an interview in Lagos, “because I wanted debtors to be intimidated when they came in to see me.”
It is easy to understand why. Amcon was Nigeria’s answer to its 2009 financial crisis. Set up and owned by the government, it was tasked with removing billions of dollars-worth of toxic assets that had crippled the banking sector. In all, it bought N3700bn ($23bn) of non-performing loans (NPLs) from commercial lenders at a cost of N1700bn. Mr Chike-Obi’s job is to recover as much value from those as he can.
