By Gani Kayode Balogun jr
Twenty years ago, the Nigerian Banking industry was in a state of flux as Mr. Charles Soludo, the current governor of Anambra state, was also a governor, but this time of the Central Bank of Nigeria,
A year earlier, the then President, Mr. Olu Obasanjo had gone through a vicious and ferocious re-election campaign, and had dumped most of the politicians in his first term cabinet and replaced them with technocrats, like Mrs. Okonjo Iweala et al.
One of those he brought on board was a young professor of Economics, the aforementioned Mr. Soludo, as governor of the CBN.
One of the core policies of the CBN governor was to phase out individual and family owned banks and create a broad based shareholding structure that will compete with the best banks in the world.
This of course led to mergers of banks, and sometimes total takeover of regional or state banks by the new mega banks.
During this process, there was a need for public offer for shares by these banks. But those who truly understood what the new policies entail were the young generation banks, whose the average age of their directors were in their 30s.
While most banks were relying on the time tested ways of placing ads, a new generation bank decided to envelope their share offers by simply putting newspapers inside a branded envelope and giving it to the public.
It caused a big uproar. Not that they did not reach out through their ad agency to other publications, but only one newspaper had the audacity to allow such audacious step.
So on that cold Monday morning, I got a call from the then MD, Mr. Demola Osinubi around 7am, to return to Lagos from one of my bi monthly working visits to our outstation offices, this time in Abuja.
I was instructed to get back to Lagos through any means possible. Luckly at that point in time, the trip from Abuja City Center to the Airport was around one hour, guaranteed.
I was lucky to catch a 10am flight, and arrived in Lagos roughly an hour later. I then had to instruct the airport taxi driver to drive against traffic from Ile zik to get me to our office then at Onipetesi.
Waiting for me was the MD, Mr. Demola Osinubi, the editor , the Chief Accountant, the Senior internal auditor and the Head of the business desk, Mr, Akin Olaniyan.
Also joining us was a team from Zenith Bank led by the then DMD, one Mr. Emefiele,as well as their Ad agency executives.
They wanted the same thing that the other paper did for the other bank,but the Punch Management was adamant that they will never tuck the Punch into an envelope, it was at this point that I joined the meeting.
I told the meeting that on my way to the airport in Abuja and coming from the Airport in Lagos, what I observed was that most vendors had removed the envelopes and returned to status quo, saying that their customers cannot read the headlines and it was affecting sales.
The Circulation team was then called into the meeting and they validated my position.
But that again, did not lead to any significant shift in the position of Management.
I now came up with another proposal, that we print two cover pages, one with the IPO with only our logo, and then wrap it around our newspaper.
It was not what they wanted, but it was a position all parties could converge around.
And thus the wrap around was born!
But the battle had just begun.
Zenith wanted to pay what their rival paid the other newspaper, but management was adamant that since we were selling ten times what the other paper was selling, they should pay ten times more.
It was now a case of catch 22.
Both parties refused to budge. It took Akin Olaniyan and myself over five hours of going back and forth between the Zenith head office and Mangoro to finally arrive at a price that was acceptable to both parties, and another two hours of nail biting tension, a period in which the MD kept reminding the two of us that we were the guarantors , and will pay the full sum if they defaulted.
Luckly Mr. Emefiele kept his word. The bank draft arrived via a dispatch rider around 11.pm, three hours after I told management that it was ready and that we should commence printing.
However, it all went well, and a few days later, I got this letter of commendation.
Ah, good times.
My10kobo.
Culled from his facebook timeline
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