ReportsNG
The audited financial statements of Sterling Financial Holdings Company Plc for the year ended December 31, 2025 say its chairman, Adeyemi “Yemi” Adeola, indirectly holds 14,757,945,697 shares of the company which is about 27 percent of it. But company filings examined by ReportsNG show that 13,314,911,284 of those shares – the bulk of the chairman’s disclosed stake sits in the name of Silverlake Investments Limited, a company the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) marks as inactive, whose filings name two directors who are not Adeola, and whose shareholders appear nowhere on record.
The bank’s own tables do the arithmetic in the open. Silverlake’s 13,314,911,284 shares plus Adeola’s pre-existing 1,443,034,413 indirect shares add up exactly to the 14,757,945,697 shares the filing attributes to him. In the directors’ table, the column headed “interest represented” lists Silverlake Investments Limited alongside four other companies under the chairman’s name. That column is a claim and not proof.
What the corporate filings say about Silverlake raises the questions. The company, RC 1163884, was registered in January 2014 and its status on the CAC register is inactive. It has only two shares issued against N10 million paid-up capital. Its stated business is building and civil engineering contracting. Its address is Plot G102, Road 67, Victoria Garden City, Ajah, Lagos. Its two directors are Barr. Antai Effiong, a lawyer and finance professional, and Engr. Eniza Peters, an executive director at an oil-services company. “No shareholder or ownership data is on file for this company,” the filings state. Neither man has any public link to Adeola or to Sterling.
A construction company with two issued shares, in inactive standing, directed by a lawyer and an engineer, holds 24.35 percent of a bank holding company and the bank’s books attribute the entire block to a chairman who is not on its board is among the ponders of ReportsNG while its reporters flipped through the records.
Two separate sets of company filings examined by ReportsNG independently confirm Peters and Effiong as Silverlake’s directors and there is no discrepancy between the records. They also extend the directors’ footprints. Effiong sits on the board of JAAP Technologies Limited alongside Joel Ekpe, Atim Isangedighi and Pauline Ekpe. The filings of Gunners FC Limited list Effiong as a director with Chika Mordi, Emmanuel Ibru, Victor Imevbore, Godson Uti and Adegoke Coker, confirming the football-administrator profile. One company the earlier records attached to Silverlake’s orbit, GMT Holding PLC, appears on no company portal at all, by name or by RC number making it either a stale record or a company that no longer exists which only the CAC has the final word on that.
The block did not sit still. Silverlake’s holding grew from 7.2 billion shares in December 2024 to 13.31 billion in December 2025 which is an extra 6.1 billion shares that, at the prices of the bank’s 2024–2025 capital raises, imply roughly N24 billion to N43 billion of acquisition value. The bank’s own audited statements record only ₦459 million in secured loans to related parties. No document in the public record names who funded the accumulation.
On what paper does the chairman’s claim rest? The audited report says directors’ interests are recorded “as notified by them” – the 13.3 billion-share attribution rests on Adeola’s own notification to the company. A full search of the 11,650-line audited report found no trust deed, no declaration of interest, no loan secured on the shares, and no nominee agreement explaining the basis on which the bank folded Silverlake’s block into his name.
Silverlake is only the smaller half of the opacity. The Sterling Closed Investment Fund holds 30.47 percent of the HoldCo which is 16.67 billion shares – from the N75 billion private placement of late 2024. The fund is not on the CAC register, which is expected of a fund, but it is also absent from the Securities and Exchange Commission’s register of collective investment schemes: the SEC’s weekly valuation report of September 11, 2026 lists five CardinalStone-managed funds, and the Sterling closed fund is not among them. No issuing house, no placing agent, no trustee and no custodian is named anywhere in the public record. The subscribers are described only as a consortium of domestic investors and ultra-high-net-worth groups. Not one human being is named.
Together, the two vehicles hold 54.82 percent of a listed holding company with no disclosed natural-person owner behind either of them.
Company filings also open the next layer of the structure. CardinalStone Asset Management who are the manager of the closed fund is itself owned by CardinalStone Partners Limited, with Mohammed Garuba and Michael Nzewi listed as its directors. So the manager of the N75 billion fund answers to a group board chaired by Fola Adeola. The group’s own documents name its largest shareholders as CardinalStone Limited with 40.7 percent, Bridgehampton Integrated Service Limited with 16.8 percent, Ifenwona Investments Limited with 8.3 percent and Chizzy Nigeria Limited with 5.2 percent. The human beings behind those vehicles are not disclosed either as the ownership trail goes up one level and stops again.
According to Nigerian laws under the Companies and Allied Matters Act 2020, anyone who holds 5 percent or more of a company’s shares, directly or indirectly, must notify the company and a substantial shareholder must disclose within 14 days whether the shares are held as beneficial owner or as nominee of a named interested person. The bank’s report names the nominee, CardinalStone Asset Management, but no interested person behind the 30.47 percent. Under the Persons with Significant Control Regulations, defaulters face being marked inactive across all CAC portals, fines imposed by the court, and up to two years’ imprisonment for the officers of the defaulting entity.
The Central Bank of Nigeria’s own Corporate Governance Guidelines require its prior written approval before anyone acquires 5 percent or more of a financial holding company. The Guidelines’ sanction clause provides for monetary penalties and administrative sanctions against the bank and the individuals involved, the suspension of a responsible director for six months in the first instance and possible removal from the board on a repeat, and sanctions for rendering false or misleading information to the CBN. Under section 27 of the Banks and Other Financial Institutions Act 2020, no change of control or transfer of significant shareholding in a bank is valid without the written consent of the CBN Governor and a transaction done without it is void, or voidable if the CBN does not rectify it. The Act punishes that breach with a fine of not less than N20 million, plus N500,000 for each day the breach continues.
The money-laundering law places the duty exactly where the names are missing. Section 4 of the Money Laundering (Prevention and Prohibition) Act 2022 requires the fund manager to identify the beneficial owner from reliable, independent sources and to be satisfied that it knows who the beneficial owner is. CardinalStone, as manager of the closed fund, holds that file. The public has never seen it.
And the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission has the mandate for exactly this kind of darkness. Sections 6 and 7 of the EFCC Act empower the Commission to investigate all financial crimes, to identify the individuals and corporate bodies involved, to trace, freeze and seize the proceeds of economic crimes, and to coordinate the enforcement of the money-laundering and banking laws. What that mandate provides for here is an investigation that names the human beings behind the two blocks and traces the N75 billion and the N24-N43 billion
Asue Ighodalo chaired Sterling Bank from August 2014 until December 2023 and remains a non-executive director of CardinalStone Partners. But he resigned before the N75 billion placement that created the fund block and before the attribution change that folded Silverlake into Adeola’s disclosed interest.
