Bayo Ogunlesi grew up in Ibadan and clerked at the US Supreme Court. He now chairs Global Infrastructure Partners.
A Nigerian-born lawyer and investment banker, Adebayo Ogunlesi founded Global Infrastructure Partners in 2006 after a career at Credit Suisse First Boston.
Adebayo “Bayo” Ogunlesi was born in 1953 and raised in Ibadan, the son of the first Nigerian professor of medicine at the University of Ibadan. He attended King’s College, Lagos, then Oxford, where he earned first-class honours, and Harvard, where he completed a law degree and an MBA and served on the Harvard Law Review.
An unusual first job
From 1980 to 1981 he was a law clerk to Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall. He then practised corporate law in New York, and in 1983 joined First Boston as an adviser on a Nigerian gas project.
He rose through the firm, which became Credit Suisse First Boston, heading its global energy group from 1997 and its investment banking division from 2002.
His own firm
In 2006 he started the private equity firm Global Infrastructure Partners (GIP), whose initial investors included Credit Suisse and General Electric. He is chairman and managing partner.
For African students who look for a path into global finance, his career is a map: excellent education, a specialist subject, in his case energy and infrastructure, and the nerve to start a firm.
