Aliko Dangote, chairman of Dangote Group, said the initial public offering of his refinery business fell short of its target of 10 million investors, blaming a tight timeline and difficulties some people had in accessing the sale.


“We cannot tell the figure right away because we have not reported to this, but we’ve gotten an amazing demand from various people,” Dangote said at the 25th annual conference of the Women in Management, Business and Public Service (WIMBIZ) in Lagos.


Dangote had set the 10 million target before the offer opened, saying the aim was to broaden ownership of the refinery beyond institutional and high-net-worth investors.

Dangote said two factors kept the offer from reaching that mark.

•Chief Aliko Dangote


“We didn’t hit the 10 million because of time constraint, and a lot of people, they didn’t know how to access,” he said.


The offer, branded “The People’s IPO,” put up 4.1 billion shares at N525 each. The minimum subscription was 10 shares, costing N5,250. It opened on September 14 and was extended to October 27.

He said the final number of investors has yet to be officially determined. He added that participation still ran into the millions.


Dangote sought to put the turnout in context by comparing it with other large share sales in Africa and globally. He said the biggest participating shareholders in past Nigerian offerings were far smaller in number, citing GTBank as an example.


“If you look at it, the largest participating shareholders, like here now, was I think GTBank. When they did their own, it was 200,000. Okay, we are talking about millions of people that participated,” he said.


He also pointed to offerings elsewhere. “Even in Kenya, Safaricom was the largest, less than 900,000. Saudi Aramco worldwide was about five million. So, and I’m sure we are not that far away,” he said.


Dangote did not give a figure for total investors, and his comparisons were his own characterisations rather than audited numbers.


Reuters reported that more than two million investors had subscribed through digital channels before the offer closed. The IPO drew about N6.4 trillion in orders from Nigerian retail and institutional investors, roughly three times the targeted offer size.

Dangote said earlier that applications came from 120 countries, including all 54 African nations.