Israel Ovirih is the Chief Executive Officer and founding Director. A Development Economist and Swiss-trained Structured Finance specialist holds the 1988/89 prestigious Chief Bayo Akinnola’s prize for the best overall graduating student from University of Ado-Ekiti. Israel Ovirih has acquired to his credit over twenty (20) years enriched career at management positions in some of Nigeria’s leading Banks including Oceanic Bank (now merged with Ecobank Plc) and GTBank.
He was one of the pioneers of Public-Private banking relationships at Oceanic in the nineties where he acted as Advisor providing specialized project-related services to various World Bank/IBRD/IDA Infrastructure and Health sector projects as well as ADB funded projects.
Israel’s local and international banking exposure led to the strategic partnership with Nationwide Equipment Group in the United States; which birthed Nationwide Finance operations in Jacksonville Beach, Florida USA since 2009. His romance with credit enhancers as well as exotic and creative financing techniques has enabled the development of financial products that fast-tracked financing for local content operators in the Nigeria’s oil and gas industry. He led the team to arranging over a billion dollar for Nigerian companies over the last four years in the maritime, oil and gas and emerging infrastructure sector. Israel’s incurable optimism and engagements with bulge investment banks, investor’s groups and export credit agencies (ECAs) worldwide will no doubt provide Nigeria’s companies unhindered access to the global capital market in the years to come. Israel was awarded Young Person of the Year 2004 in the area of enterprise development, financial and economic development by Junior Chamber, Nigeria (JCN).
Israel Ovirih has participated in several management development programs in Europe and the Americas including the Enterpreneurship Development Program at MIT, Boston USA.
