SAO Group appoints Ayo Sotinrin as CEO

SAO Group, an agricultural and other business chain, company has appointed Ayo Sotinrin as its Chief Executive Officer.

Sotinrin has extensive experience in the public and private sectors, spanning large-scale commercial agriculture, finance, investment banking, management consultancy, and advisory roles.

Before his appointment as Group CEO of SAO Group, he served as CEO for SAO Agro – one of the leading African food and agri-business company focused on Agriculture and Agro-allied services.

Under his leadership, the firm SAO Agro is currently developing 20,000 Hectares Oil palm Plantation in Ondo State, Nigeria.

Other value chains in its business include five million bird annual Poultry production and processing and aquaculture, large scale maize and Cassava plantation.

SAO is currently the anchor investor for the Ondo State “Special Agro-processing Zone project“ spanning 3,000 Hectares to accommodate large-scale agro-commodity processors from different countries.

He also served as the Chief Executive Officer, at SAO Capital and under his leadership, SAO Capital was appointed as sole Investment and Multilateral Advisory firm to Ondo State Government, where he raised over half a billion dollars ($750m) for various developmental projects such as the $200m Akure Water Supply infrastructure Project,  large Scale Agriculture project financing, over 200 healthcare solar electrification projects, and over 150km of Rural Roads.

He served as a senior advisor on many high-level Federal, State Government developmental programmes funded by development partners (World Bank, Afd, DFID, Afdb, USAID, UNDP), he also spent six years as a Senior World Bank consultant on the $115m PPP Infrastructure concessioning Project seconded to the Federal Ministry of Finance and the ICRC under the Presidency.

He worked also with the UK Government-funded Nigeria Infrastructure Advisory Facility 1 & II (NIAF).

From 2011-2015, he served as Special Adviser (Environment & Urban Development) to the Minister of State FCT.

Prior to working in Nigeria, he worked for two Investment Banks, Royal Bank of Scotland International in the British Isles (Guernsey, Jersey, Gibraltar, Isle of man) and Deutsche Bank, Thomson Reuters and with the UK Government at the Environment Agency UK.

Sotinrin, sits on many boards, including Africa 2.0 where he was the country Chapter Head and a Director on the global board.

He has an MBA degree from Said Business School, Oxford University, an Advanced Undergraduate in Environmental Conservation & Management from Oxford University and an MSc in Engineering Business Management from Warwick University.

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