The debate about the need for work-life balance is an unending one, and it will always come up in spaces where you find both employers and employees – places like LinkedIn. Funny though, that a lot of people seem to think of work-life balance in regards to the employees, and hardly for the employer.

It seems like people hardly expect founders and entrepreneurs to achieve a work-life balance. I remember seeing a post recently where a founder posted that he never had to worry about work-life balance because his work is his life. By implication, a busy workday is the equivalent of a work-life balance.

That statement might have gotten you laughing but in truth, it is a mindset that quite a lot of entrepreneurs and founders share. It just seems to make sense to the founder that if he has quite a career to start this business, invested his life savings and whatever other resources he had, then the business has become his life; maybe because he considers at this point that the business crashing would be equivalent to his life crashing.

But there is a question, what happens if you crash and the business is left running?

Work-life balance is as important to the entrepreneur as it is to employees. You can have an hour or two to take your family out on weekends, or maybe a couple of hours to play tennis with friends or cycle in the evening. Two hours of seeing a movie on a Saturday will not crash your business, neither will a weekend trip to a resort.

The interesting part is that if you pick your fun wisely, it could even enhance your business. You can network and meet with people who will be instrumental to your business growth in the process. I know a couple of entrepreneurs who met their co-founders in the most unlikely places like at a restaurant, at the movies, while playing tennis, etc.

If two hours away from your business will crumble it, then you probably did not have a business anyway. Get a social life. I know this advice sounds difficult especially when it already seems like there isn’t enough time to do all the things that need to be done. Consider your welfare, and yes! your mental health too.

The life of a startup founder will certainly include challenges and sacrifices, but it is not a good excuse to cut off friends, family and allow your health to deteriorate. Running a business gets crazy, and you may need to step away from the madhouse to regain your sanity before coming back in to restructure it.

Just like financial experts say “You don’t need to be earning enough before you start investing. Your income may never be enough but that is no reason not to set aside a little for investing.” In the same way, I like to think “You don’t need to have enough time before taking a little to relax. You relax a little so that you can run your business better and eventually have enough time”.

The Nigeria Football Federation has made the call on Super Eagles head coach. It was half-way with “Jose” but ended the other side with “Peseiro” when some of us were hoping for “Mourinho”. Lol. Let me congratulate Jose Peseiro for being appointed Nigeria’s Super Eagles head coach. Augustine Eguavoen remains the interim manager for the Africa Cup of Nations which begins in January.

Yet, besides national team coaching, NFF needs to make changes to make its local league entertaining. People do not really care about the yoyos provided you give them good shows and entertainment. Until we get that local league going, Nigerians will not believe that much.

Welcome Jose.

I have read many articles on the acquisition of Union Bank Nigeria by Titan Trust Bank. Many of the hypotheses have focused on digital Darwinism of the century-old bank, chronicling how young people are not patronizing the bank, giving it an imperiled future. The remedy postulated by the authors is this: adapt or you will die like Union Bank.

But today, the lender has put a notice: “Titan Trust Bank Limited (TTB) has become the majority shareholder in Union Bank of Nigeria Plc. This followed an agreement by Union Global Partners Limited, Atlas Mara Limited and other majority shareholders to divest 88.39 per cent  shareholding in Union Bank to TTB….subject to regulatory approvals and other financial conditions, would upon completion transfer 89.39 percent of Union Bank’s issued share capital to TTB.”

For academic purposes and since we’re not in session in Tekedia Mini-MBA, I will present an alternative way to look at this deal. Typically, I would have scheduled a Zoom  session for our members so that we can have a synchronous conversation so that at the end, everyone learns. We can still do that in Feb when we resume.

Here is what I want to posit: what happened to Union Bank was not majorly because the bank was not performing well. Simply, even if the bank was performing at 4x its current numbers and its major shareholders decide to exit, they could have still gone ahead. Sure, great numbers would have made the acquisition very expensive, diminishing interests from bargain hunters. 

The real issue is this: Union Bank has lost control of itself when it had more than 51% of its shares out there. That three of its shareholders banded together and sold to a 4th investor, giving it super-majority, is part of market systems. If you do not want that, never allow 51% to be floating as those external players can team together and change the equation.

Union Bank’s only option was bidding higher than Titan Trust Bank on whatever those investors were asking for. In other words, Union Bank would be expected to buy itself back by paying investors who held its shares. Unfortunately for the bank, it does not have the funds to do that. Afterall, it sold part of itself to get money from those investors to start with!

That those investors sold to Titan Trust Bank, and from rumors, at a great premium to what the bank was trading at the stock exchange, is actually a great confidence in the bank’s operations. This is not similar to what happened to Blockbuster and Nokia which faded due to massive disruptions from new innovators. This is simply that some investors wanted to exit because one of them needed money badly to pay down maturing debts, and they looked for someone with cash to bail them out. 

Union Bank is to a large extent a bystander. But since this is banking where anyone with at least 10% control cannot be hidden, it was looped in as those shares moved hands. So, the bank just watched as the deals were concluded, and at the end, a very small bank swallowed it. Titan Bank has a balance sheet of N136.3 billion while Union Bank is at N2.56 trillion, more than 18x larger.

In the United States where markets allow different classes of shares which make it possible for someone to own 25% of a company and still control up to 70% of its voting rights, this might not be possible, assuming someone holding the special shares is on Union Bank side.  

That US structure is the reason no one can remove Mark Zuckerberg  who who owns about 13% (down from 28% at IPO) of Meta (yes, Facebook)  via different classes of shares but still controls 60% of the votes. Nigeria law does not allow that type of structure; we’re largely 1-by-1 which means 1% ownership delivers 1% voting right in the company.

So, how do you avoid what happened to Union Bank? Follow the playbook of Aliko Dangote: never make more than 50% available for the public. With that, even if all the hunters and vultures gather, they will still be short of the majority! Dangote controls about 85% of Dangote Cement’s available shares and what that means is this: even if all you thousands team together, you can only get to 15%, and that means he remains the Oga.

Of course Union Bank could have avoided the acquisition but for those government bailouts from Central Bank of Nigeria and AMCOM which forced the bank to raise capital, and in the process created the super-holders. But that old Union Bank is different from the current one. The problem though is that the current leadership cannot change the structure because they do not have the funds. Of course, it was the bank that put itself into the old position to start it: creative destruction, people.