Olusoji Elias — Global Corporate Lawyer of the Year 2025

Olusoji Elias was called to the Nigeria Bar in 1985, having read law at the University of London (LLB Honours LSE 1984; PhD legal research UCL 1996), and at the University of Hull (LLM with Distinction 1986; best performing candidate), and The Hague Academy (1989)

He is the author of Judicial Remedies in the Conflict of Laws (Hart Publishing, Oxford, 2001, with a Foreword by the Rt. Hon. The Lord Wilberforce PC CMG OBE QC) — based on a UCL doctoral thesis (https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10104122/ British Library Reference uk.bl.ethos.338735) — as well as many peer-reviewed articles, reviews and commentary in leading law journals

He serves as Director and General Counsel for the Greyhorse Capital conglomerate (New York and London), as Director at Capricorn Maritime, as well as external Corporate Counsel for COOEC FZE Nigeria, the Chinese s.o.e. responsible for the acclaimed Dangote Refinery. He recently stepped away from services as Honorary Counsel for the Jordanian Consul in Nigeria

And then there was his “Obama Period” during which repeat reference was made to and reliance was placed on his verbatim dicta by Barack Obama on several occasions in public speeches delivered at the White House to the pleasure of a worldwide cognoscenti. He is recognized as a leading independent commentator on international affairs relating to Africa and Nigeria

He has counselled several uniquely unprecedented scenarios of interest to date, such as legal management and direction of the only Afrobeats music to ever have featured in the U.K.‘s pop music Top Ten. He is the owner~founder and chairman of aetasLF, the only institutional African legal funder outside South Africa. aetasLF is decorated as the most innovative legal funder on the African continent

Much as his choice of mainstay in Nigerian practice has been advisory and executive, rather than court work, he has  prevailed as barrister in every claim he has marshalled

He was previously a senior lawyer in a firm in Nigeria between 2001 and 2005, serving for example as a leading local counsel in an international consortium mandated by the Government of the Federal Republic of Nigeria to privatise the downstream subsector of the local oil and gas sector, among several other major privatizations conducted within the World Bank Guidelines; as a member of the Technical Committee of the Central Bank of Nigeria to advise as to the consolidation of the local banking industry via M&A; and as leading counsel in the defence of a local bank involved in large-scale cross-border banking litigation; as well as in several top-tier international arbitrations under the ICC Paris Rules. He also led numerous capitalisations, private placements, IPOs, re-structurings, issuances and other financings and financial law items during this time, including an experts' delivery broadcast on national television

Between 1990 and 1999, he was a law lecturer in English university and vocational legal education, often in CPD formats (giving, among several items, the Autumn Lecture of the Society for Advanced Legal Studies of the University of London in November 2000 (as an Associate Fellow thereof), titled Globalisation and Private International Law- Reviewing Contemporary Local Law), as well as a consulting expert to solicitors' firms in London

His range has covered cutting-edge topics including globalisation and law, competition law and policy in reference to transnational corporate finance, the professions, and several others such as in the well~regarded WG Hart Legal Workshops hosted by the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies

He is a member of several lawyers' professional organisations and associations, including the Nigerian Bar Association, the Inner Temple, the IBA, the international membership of the New York State Bar, the Commonwealth Lawyers Association, the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators, and the Association of Attenders and Alumni of The Hague Academy of International Law and its Professional Lawyers' Intergroup

Olusoji Elias was elected to the Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House) in October 2007. He divides his time between Nigeria and the United Kingdom