An executive director of United Bank for Africa, Ugochukwu Nwaghodoh and Group Company Secretary, Bili Odum, have acquired 27 million units of the financial group’s shares.

The value of the newly acquired shares was about N701.49m, according to details of the transaction filed with the Nigerian Exchange Limited on Friday.

Nwaghodoh bought 12 million shares at N26.02 bringing the worth of the transaction to N312.24m, while Odum bought 15,000,000 units of UBA shares at N25.95 each.

His acquisition was done in 10 deals valued at N389.25m.

The latest acquisition followed ones that took place earlier in the week, four directors of UBA (including Nwaghodoh and Odum) have acquired about 42,336,281 units of the banking group shares valued at N1.12bn.

Nwaghodoh purchased 10 million shares at an average of N26.22 per unit in 10 tranches, amounting to N262.20m.

Also, the company secretary acquired 10 million units of the lender’s shares in three transactions at an average rate of N26.10 per unit, valued at worth N261m.

These acquisitions come on the heels of the capitalisation drive of the bank to meet the new capital threshold of the Central Bank of Nigeria.

Already, the lender had said it would seek shareholders’ approval to raise funds from both the domestic and international capital markets.

The securities of UBA had led the volume chart of the NGX in the last two trading sessions with 79.98 million units transacted in 689 trades on Wednesday and 102.23 million units, worth N2.68bn, exchanged in 952 trades on Tuesday.

On Thursday, trading activities in UBA shares were only surpassed by that of Nigerian Breweries.

UBA shares closed Friday’s trading at N26.4, having appreciated by 0.96 per cent from the previous day.