Nigerian, Adebayo Ogunlesi, 56, acquires London Gatwick Airport

A Nigerian, Adebayo Ogunlesi, has acquired the London Gatwick Airport as the new owner. The Gatwick deal is a £1.455 billion agreement with BAA Airports Limited.

According to the report, Ogunlesi, the son of an 86-year old professor of medicine has presided over a great number of sweet deals that made him the envy of his peers abroad even if his forays into the brisk world multi-billion dollars deals are barely talked about in his home country.

GIP will be investing through Ivy Bidco Limited, a limited liability company registered in England, established for the purpose of making the acquisition. Ogunlesi says the acquisition of Gatwick is a landmark deal for GIP and adds another quality asset to his firm's rapidly expanding portfolio.

His teacher while at King's College, Lagos, J. Namme, said that Bayo, as he is fondly called, loves getting things done. Perhaps, the London Gatwick Airport acquisition best underscores his desire to get things done and in the big way too. The Gatwick deal illustrates his global influence in infrastructure assets deals.

Ogunlesi attended the prestigious King's College, Lagos. He is a member of the District of Columbia Bar Association. He was a lecturer at Harvard Law School and the Yale School. Ogunlesi, studied philosophy, politics and economics at Oxford and then earned law and business degrees from Harvard. In the US, he is known as the Nigerian who clerked for late Supreme Court justice, Thurgood Marshall, who they say was unable to pronounce his name and quickly dubbed him Obeedoogee. Colleagues and friends call him Bayo.

Gatwick was officially opened by the Queen in June 1958 and was the first airport in the world to combine air, rail and road transport in a close-knit single unit. It is the second largest airport in the UK, with the terminals serving around 200 destinations and welcoming over 32 million passengers every year.

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