Mr William Adjovu, Group Chief Executive Officer of Liberty Group of Companies, won Best Entrepreneur (Banking & Finance) at the 3rd UT Ghana Entrepreneur Awards.
The awards were held at the State House on Saturday to celebrate the best Ghanaian entrepreneurs across all sector of business.
William Adjovu is the Group Chief Executive Officer of Liberty Group of Companies Ghana Limited and Managing Director of Liberty Capital Ghana Limited.
Prior to joining Liberty Capital, William was an investment banker at Morgan Stanley in New York. There, he initially worked in the Emerging Markets Group where he underwrote debt securities for Latin American sovereigns from Mexico to Argentina as well as corporations within those countries.
Underwriting debt securities involved thorough due diligence on the companies or governments, verifying information being reported and looking out for any suspicious item that may cause investors to suffer losses after pricing the security to the public. Some projects William worked on were raising $1.5 billion for the government of Mexico, $600 million for the government of Panama, $500 million for the government of Brazil, $1.2 billion for America Movil as well as interest rate analysis for Chilean banks.
From the Emerging Markets Group, William worked in the Energy, Utility and Transportation Group underwriting debt securities for mainly U.S. companies within that sector. Applying the same principles for due diligence, William worked with another colleague to raise $700 million for Dominion Resources, a utility company based out of Virginia; $300 million for Consolidated Edison, a utility company in New York; $90 million for Wisconsin Energy’s subsidiary Wisconsin Gas and on Net Present Value Buyback Analysis for Exelon Corporation, Noble Energy, ExxonMobil, Chevron, Encana and CSX. He also worked to raise $298 million for Union Pacific, $1.3 billion debt buyback for CSX and a debt downgrade impact analysis for Commonwealth Edison.
From the Energy, Utility & Transportation Group, William worked in the Technology, Media & Telecommunications Group where he worked in a team of two other colleagues to raise $6.5 billion for Cisco Systems – the largest corporate debt issue for 2006, $4 billion for Verizon, $2.5 billion for Comcast, $2 billion for Symantec and $400 million for Sabre Technologies.
He also worked on a $20 billion equity share buyback for AOL Time Warner. Together, he has executed over $40 billion in transactions for countries and companies around the world.
William graduated Magna Cum Laude from Morehouse College and holds a Bachelor of Arts degree with concentration in accounting and banking. He holds numerous awards including the United States President’s Award for Community Service and the United States Internal Revenue Service Appreciation Award for Education.
Find out more about Liberty Group here.
