Meet Adedayo Ogunlesi, the Nigerian who acquired London Gatwick Airport.

According to Forbes, Adebayo (Bayo) O. Ogunlesi, 60, has served as a Director since 2011 (and as a Director of our predecessor KEH since 2004). Since 2006, Mr. Ogunlesi has been Chairman and Managing Partner of Global Infrastructure Partners (GIP), a private equity firm that invests in infrastructure assets in the energy, transport and water sectors, in both OECD and select emerging market countries. Mr. Ogunlesi previously served as Executive Vice Chairman and Chief Client Officer of Credit Suisse's Investment Banking Division with senior responsibility for Credit Suisse's corporate and sovereign investment banking clients. From 2002 to 2004, he was Head of Credit Suisse's Global Investment Banking Department.

 He has been reported to be the new owner of the London Gatwick Airport.The Gatwick deal is a £1.455 billion agreement with BAA Airports Limited.

GIP will be investing through Ivy Bidco Limited, a limited liability company registered in England, established for the purpose of making the acquisition.

Bidco will pay cash consideration of £1,455 million for the entire share capital of Gatwick Airport Limited on a cash-free, debt-free basis.

Ogunlesi says the acquisition of Gatwick is a landmark deal for GIP and adds another quality asset to his firm's rapidly expanding portfolio.

He said, "we see significant scope to apply both our strong operational focus and our knowledge of the airports sector to make Gatwick an airport of choice."

He began stacking up his big deals profile when he joined the top-shelf New York law firm, Cravath, Swain & Moore. It was at the law firm that he jumped at the chance to advise First Boston (which later acquired Credit Suisse in 1997 to form Credit Suisse First Boston or CSFB) on a hugely lucrative Nigerian gas project.

The success of that deal landed him his first big pay move to First Boston, where he worked on project finance, brokering deals in which lenders finance assets like oil refineries and mines and are repaid with revenues generated by those enterprises.

Based in New York City and traveling to emerging markets, he built CSFB's project-finance business into the world's best, in part by encouraging corporations and governments to tap public debt markets in addition to commercial lenders.

His teacher while at King's College, Lagos, J. Namme, said that Bayo, as he is fondly called, loves getting things done. Perhaps, the London Gatwick Airport acquisition best underscores his desire to get things done and in the big way too. The Gatwick deal illustrates his global influence in infrastructure assets deals.

Ogunlesi attended the prestigious King’s College, Lagos. He is a member of the District of Columbia Bar Association. He was a lecturer at Harvard Law School and the Yale School. Ogunlesi, whose father was the first Nigerian-born medical professor, studied philosophy, politics and economics at Oxford and then earned law and business degrees from Harvard. In the US, he is known as the Nigerian who clerked for late Supreme Court justice, Thurgood Marshall, who they say was unable to pronounce his name and quickly dubbed him Obeedoogee. Colleagues and friends call him Bayo.