How I set up my family office-Austin Avuru

After more than 40 years in the oil and gas sector, it can be said that Austin Avuru has been through the motions in his business career. He started his career in NNPC as a geologist and is currently navigating his journey as the Vice Chairman of Platform Petroleum.

This is after his time as the pioneer CEO of Seplat, Nigeria’s first publicly listed upstream oil company. At the end of his sojourn in Seplat, Austin ventured into the creation of his family office, AA Holdings.

As part of a panel during BusinessDay’s Family Business Summit held on October 17 in Lagos, Avuru put the spotlight on the pathway to the creation of his family office.

He said, “I have spent all of my time since graduation in the oil and gas industry in Nigeria. I did my first 12 years in NNPC, and then I went into the private sector. I worked for another 10 years for another oil and gas company, and then co-founded a small, marginal oil company called Platform Petroleum.”

“I ran it for 8 years and then went on to co-found Seplat Energy. Seplat Energy was Seplat Petroleum and I ran it for 10 years.”

“When I was preparing to retire, I had to ask myself, what next? And I decided I was going to set up a family office, which essentially is an investment company. We set up AA Holdings four years ago when I retired from Seplat.”

A family office is an investment group that helps manage and grow businesses using legal and financial resources. A major difference between a family office and a private equity firm is the source of funds. Family offices manage the wealth of the family, while private equity manages the wealth of multiple investors.

Avuru noted, “The difference between a family office and a private equity firm is that the family office utilizes its own funds, its own revenues, from whatever else he had created, to then drive his investments,”

Avuru noted about AA Holdings, “Everything I had created, my interest in Seplat, my interest in Platform Petroleum, and a few other investments, we migrated all of them into this family office. So, we run the family office with the revenues from previous investments.”

AA Holdings has interests in the energy, agriculture, and real estate sectors. It also has equities investments in the NGX.

Avuru highlighted the philanthropic achievements of his family office. “A very critical arm of our family office is our foundation that runs our philanthropy, AA Foundation.”

He said, “In education, we just built a Jesuit secondary school in Delta State. Same thing as Loyola Jesuit in Abuja, it’s the fourth one in the country. We built it four and handed it over to the Catholic Church.”

“We built a hospital and also handed it over to the Catholic Church. So our foundation is a very critical element of our family office.”

Family offices are relatively new features in the Nigerian investment management scene, with some of the most prominent being Tony Elumelu’s Heirs Holdings, Oba Otudeko’s Honeywell Group, and TY Danjuma Family Office.