CHARLES IKE-OKOH meets the Deloitte global chairman STEVE ALMOND who came on a visit with the firm’s growing clientele
Steve Almond is cheerfully seated on the other side of the table, attentively listening to the questions raised around the reason for his visit to Nigeria and occasionally brakes into a wide smile that reflects his enthusiasm and positive views about the prospects of Nigeria’s economy.
“The rebasing of GDP told the world that there are a lot more going on in Nigeria than the oil and gas. We knew that already because we see that our clients, particularly in the financial services, technology, media, telecommunications, consumer business are very interested in Nigeria.”
With over 30 years’ experience in financial services sector, including two-year secondment to the Bank of England and 18 months as Group Head, Financial Div., JP Morgan Securities, London, Steve came to Nigeria with a whole lot of experience and positives for Deloitte’s clients and hunger to continue to grow the business in Nigeria.
“We still need to grow our range of services, so we are investing heavily in Nigeria particularly in risk advisory, corporate finance and in services our clients need and expect from us along the audit and tax business we already have provided for many years,” he says.
“We are very proud of our heritage in Nigeria, particularly on the other side with Akintola Williams. We have a strong audit and tax business here. Out of the $35 billion revenue we generate worldwide, we do generate much business in consulting and other advisory services as we do in tax.:
He says Deloitte is very interested in African market as whole.
“And within that we are very interested in Nigeria. Deloitte is a global organisation with 200,000 people operating in over 100 countries around the world. Our global revenue is in the region of $35billion. You don’t get to that scale and continue to grow from there unless you work with some of the world’s biggest international companies. And we need to be able to serve our clients wherever they choose to operate. And the simple fact is many of our international companies are choosing to operate in Africa and particularly in Nigeria.”
“And so we need to make sure we have the capability on the ground here in Nigeria to satisfy our international clients and indeed the growing number of major Nigerian companies that are looking to expand outside of Nigeria.
We did not need Nigeria to rebase its economy to tell us that it is rapidly diversifying from being an oil dependent economy. The obvious reason for that is that Nigeria has the largest Africa population and the largest economy. And you a burgeoning middle class consumer society, so it is not surprising that consumer driven businesses and financial services are coming to Nigeria.”
He went on to explain the firm’s future investment strategy in the country.
“I can’t give you a precise figure for now of how much we intend to invest,” he says.
“But we spend a lot of time talking about strategy for Nigeria. The key thing is that we want to build a stable and high quality business rather than just growing for growing sake. So we will invest as much as we can to attract the right quality of resource and train these resources to meet our expectations and client’s expectations. It is going to be multiple millions of dollars. And it will be steady investment for the next four to five years,” he said, to underscore the importance of Nigeria to Deloitte.
“Our advisory strategy will be driven by what our clients demand and the Deloitte brand is a very strong brand that is known for a range of professional services.
I mention oil and gas as major sector here. But the growth area after the rebasing of GDP has demonstrated is in the services. So from industry point of view, we are going to invest in building industry capabilities in services, consumer businesses. From competency point of view, it will be all the things we know, the experience that our clients look towards us to provide. So it will be in strategy, operations and technology. Risk is huge area of opportunity for us, so risk advisory services of all types, and also, mergers and acquisitions and all other areas we are well known for and we have developed to any significant degree.”
Reflecting on developments in the power Sector, he says that the Deloitte sees that as an area of opportunities like others.
“We will have a driven approach to the market. We definitely see opportunities in the power sector particularly the Discos and it is one of the many opportunities.”
Steve also talked about the many challenges of Nigeria and made a passionate plea for positive changes, the type that could help spur the type of investment the country needs.
“What business community likes anywhere in the world is stability, consistency and transparency. And you can apply that to critical situation, the rule of law, corporate governance, tax system and flow of talent.
Nigeria has some challenges. if you look at some of the well-known indices like the global competitiveness Index and Ease of Doing Business Index produced by the World Bank and IMF, Nigeria is in the lower end of the those indices.
So, I think Nigeria need to look at what levers it need to push or pull to improve its competitiveness and improve the ease of doing business and to improve different talents.
Nigeria has huge assets in its population but it is an under invested assets. From my interactions with business people and clients, what the business community needs is a flow of talent to respond to the market opportunities here with the rights skills. Just having lots of people is an asset but unless you equip them to meet the demands of the business community, then you can continue to have a challenge of youth unemployment; Job creation is huge challenge in Africa. It is particularly a big challenge if you’ve got a huge population as you have in Nigeria.
So I think, investing in education will be a very big priority for me if I have a say in Nigeria both for the economy advancement and social advancement. Another challenge for Nigeria and most of African countries is social inequality. Social index, which is an alternative measure to GDP, measures the advancement of the country across the whole range of environment.
Nigeria is one of the countries that does less well in the social progress index, relative to its GDP per capita. So it does less on social index compared to GDP per capita. That is common with other oil-rich countries like Russia and Saudi Arabia.
They do less well on social progress index than on GDP per capita, which suggests that the benefits of those oil and gas assets are not flowing through many rather they are flowing to a few.
So education will be a strong way of closing that inequality gap by creating the jobs we need. Also corruption needs to be tackled because indications have shown that it is huge drain on ease of doing business index and on GDP.”
Almond also serves as Managing Partner of International Markets at Deloitte LLP in the United Kingdom. In this role, he looks after Deloitte United Kingdom’s international relationships and activities. He has Executive responsibility for Switzerland (part of Deloitte United Kingdom) and oversees the UK member firm’s investments in the Commonwealth of Independent States.
He earned his Bachelor’s degree from the University of London. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales, and a member of the Deloitte UK Executive. He also sat on the Deloitte UK Board for nearly 15 years and was a member of the Deloitte Global Executive Committee.
