Christine Sijuwade

Christine Sijuwade is a Partner at the firm. Her primary practice area is Competition Law, and she specialises in competition and antitrust law, corporate advisory, mergers and acquisitions, restructuring, and private equity.

She provides strategic legal counsel to high-profile local and international clients on complex transactions, including mergers, acquisitions and investments across diverse financial services, healthcare, telecommunications, FinTech and FMCG sectors.

Her expertise extends to international lending transactions, including syndicated loans and financial and capital markets matters. She has advised on private placements and has played a pivotal role in establishing and registering mutual and private equity funds within her asset management and collective investment practice. She also provides regulatory and transactional guidance on the Nigerian bond market.

As part of her corporate advisory practice, she leads due diligence exercises and evaluates regulatory compliance, credit portfolios and overall business viability in the context of mergers, investments and financing transactions.

She was a member of the Technical Committee established by Nigeria's 8th Senate, led by Dr. Olubukola Saraki, to review the Companies and Allied Matters Act (CAMA). Her contributions helped shape the CAMA (Repeal and Re-enactment) Bill, which was passed by the Senate on 15 May 2018, later passed by the 9th National Assembly and signed into law by the President on 7 August 2020.

She serves on the Advisory Board of the Legal Business Unit of BusinessDay and is a Council Member of the Nigerian Bar Association – Section on Business Law (NBA-SBL). She is also a member of the International Bar Association (IBA) and the Financial Services Lawyers Association.

Before rejoining Udo Udoma & Belo-Osagie, she held key leadership roles, including Group General Counsel & Chief Operating Officer at Tangerine Financial. Her experience includes working at Standard Chartered Bank Nigeria Limited, Denton Wilde Sapte LLP (now Dentons) in London, and O'Melveny & Myers LLP in London.