About Us

Corporate Profile

Chieftain Associates… The African Leasing Experience

Based in Baltimore, Maryland, Chieftain Associates undertakes the business of equipment lease brokerage and international lease consulting and advisory.  The company’s focus is on the emerging economies in Africa, with practice emphasis on the development of financing and leasing programs.

In association with the world’s foremost authority in leasing, Amembal & Associates, and in collaboration with national leasing associations, Chieftain is working to spur activities in the asset finance and equipment leasing industry on the African Continent via:

  • Lease Consulting & Advisory Services

  • Public & Private Lease Training Programs

  • Lease Accounting Software & Leasing Publications

Chieftain’s conferences and workshops x-ray leasing’s challenges, and highlight policy instruments needed to encourage leasing.  The conferences also provide participants with opportunities to explore financing and joint venture possibilities in the countries we go to.

The company has successfully conducted three cycles of conferences and workshops in Lagos and Abuja, Nigeria and in Accra, Ghana.

About the Founder...

Ejiofor A. Ezekwe is a banker, financial and development consultant, and a lease broker.  He is the Founder, President and CEO of Chieftain Associates, an international lease brokerage and leasing development consultancy with practice emphasis on the development of financing and leasing programs.

Mr. Ezekwe has over 20 years experience in merchant and commercial banking, and business and financial advisory, providing creative solutions to a myriad of business and financial challenges.  He has unparalleled expertise and experience in the equipment leasing industry both in Nigeria and in the United States. 

He developed the leasing product for Chase Merchant Bank, Nigeria in 1983 and helped found the Equipment Leasing Association of Nigeria, of which he served as its Secretary/Treasurer, and then President, from 1986 to 1991.  He was the General Manager of First Interstate Merchant Bank (1988-1993), served on the board of Cooperative and Commerce Bank (1993), and the Managing Director/Chief Executive of African Continental Bank (1993-1997).  He founded Chieftain Associates in 1999.

As an equipment leasing professional, he provided the marketing, structuring and documentation support for leasing transactions, running programs in capital, sales-aid and vendor leasing, and managing the largest lease portfolio in Nigeria.  He structured, analyzed and managed the first series of local lease financing for aircrafts in Nigeria.  He also successfully completed the first leveraged lease transaction in Nigeria.

As a banker, he had relationship management responsibilities for over 40 credit and foreign exchange customers, from top-tier multinationals to small names in metal fabrication, information, printing, trading, and finance and energy industries.  He built the organizational structures, systems and controls that supported the rapid growth and excellent profitability of a start-up merchant bank.  He designed and brought to market the first Nigerian mutual fund – the First Interstate Unit Fund.

As a turnaround manager, he was recruited by the Central Bank of Nigeria to manage the restructuring effort of the fifth largest bank in Nigeria, with 116 domestic branches and a London branch, that had become distressed.  He arrested the bank’s deteriorating financial condition by achieving a significant reduction in its size and operations within a short period.






Resources

Links for Useful resources can be dropped here

Head Office

1st Floor
15, Panama Street, Maitama
Abuja, Nigeria
Tel: 234 (703) 7923 827
Email: info@chieftainassociates.com
Web: http://www.chieftainassociates.com