Business big shot
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The oil industry is well-known for its contact with top movers and shakers — Sir Bill Gammell, the chief executive of Cairn Energy, was a schoolfriend of George W Bush — but Osman Shahenshah was connected with the great and good even before he was born.
For the parents of Mr Shahenshah, the founder and chief executive of Afren, the Africa-based oil and gas independent, were brought together by none other than John F Kennedy, a predecessor to Mr Bush in the White House.
Like the late US President, Mr Shahenshah has a committed base of supporters, many of whom will have been cheering yesterday after the latest development at Afren.
The company was founded in 2004 with £1 million that Mr Shahenshah and his two co-founders, Egbert Imomoh and Ethelbert Cooper, had borrowed from friends and family. It listed on the Alternative Investment Market the following year, raising £8 million from investors, giving it a market capitalisation of £20 million.
Yesterday, the shares made their debut on the official list after stepping up from AIM, rising 2½p to 94p to give Afren a stock market value of £798 million. This was boosted by the recent completion of a successful £104.9 million fundraising — to finance projects and acquisitions — and means that at the next reshuffle, Afren should qualify for membership of the FTSE 250.
Afren was established with the aim of becoming a pan-African independent exploration and production company with a strong African presence in the boardroom and which also had close partnerships with indigenous companies, national oil companies and governments in the Continent.
Today, the company owns 16 assets in six African countries including Nigeria, Ivory Coast and Ghana, producing the equivalent of 26,000 barrels of oil daily. Many industry followers put its rise down to the tenacity of Mr Shahenshah, 47, who was born in Pakistan to an American father and Indian mother and who now has dual US-British nationality.
Mr Shahenshah has a PhD from the University of Pennsylvania. Before founding Afren, he honed his skills in oil and gas finance at investment banks Credit Suisse First Boston, Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein and Mediocredito Centrale, as well as at the private sector arm of the World Bank.
Married to an Italian, he has two young children and lives in London, playing squash, something his colleagues attest, keeps him "very fit". |
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Author Resource:-
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By :
Tom Jui
Submitted
2011-10-24 03:41:21 |
Article From Article Mayhem
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