First Bank of Nigeria

First Bank of Nigeria has operated continuously since 1894 — the longest unbroken commercial existence of any Nigerian institution apart from the colonial-era trading houses. Its founding capital came from Alfred Jones's Elder Dempster shipping line, which needed a bank in Lagos to handle bills of exchange on the palm-oil trade. From 1912 to 1959 the bank was the sole issuing agent for the West African Currency Board, meaning that for forty-seven years every coin and note circulating in Nigeria, the Gold Coast, Sierra Leone and the Gambia passed through its branch network.

Decolonisation reduced the bank's monopoly role but not its primacy. Indigenisation under the 1969 Banking Decree converted the British-controlled subsidiary into Standard Bank Nigeria; the 1972 and 1977 Indigenisation Decrees forced majority Nigerian equity; and the 1979 renaming to First Bank of Nigeria completed the symbolic break. The bank retained its position as the largest commercial bank by deposits through the 1980s and most of the 1990s.

The consolidation of 2004–2005 — N25 billion minimum capital — left First Bank one of the surviving 25 institutions. The 2012 holdco restructuring created FBN Holdings; the 2021 boardroom crisis, in which the CBN dissolved both the holding-company and bank boards on the same day after a contested removal of CEO Adesola Adeduntan, was the most serious governance event of the Fourth Republic banking sector. Femi Otedola's subsequent emergence as the single largest shareholder marked the first time a Nigerian private investor had assumed effective ownership control of First Bank in its 130-year history.