Hugo Azevedo Azevedo is a seasoned executive with nearly three decades of strategic finance and investment banking experience in top-level management positions, specialising in audit, financial due diligence, strategic advisory mergers and acquisitions, investment banking and senior finance. He has recently been appointed as Chief Financial Officer of Group OPAIA, a diversified Angolan conglomerate with operations in Angola, Dubai, and Portugal.
In this role, Hugo will lead the Group’s financial strategy, including institutional governance, the modernisation of financial processes, tax optimisation and treasury management, as well as M&A, debt sourcing using private debt funds, export credit agencies or via project finance structures. His key focus is to continue the improvement in the alignment of OPAIA’s operations across jurisdictions in recent years and fostering the Group’s sustainable and resilient growth.
He has also been appointed in the position of CFO and Executive Board Member of AMUFERT, OPAIA’s flagship industrial project focused on the local production and commercialisation of fertilisers in Angola. AMUFERT, a multi-billion-dollar greenfield granulated urea fertiliser plant, will contribute to the country’s agricultural transformation and long-term food security through sustainable, locally integrated solutions.
Born in Angola and raised in South Africa, Hugo is a qualified Chartered Accountant. He spent six years in London in financial due diligence for EY and Strategic mergers and acquisitions with Rabobank International. Returning to Africa he then worked for African Alliance, Standard Bank and Standard Chartered Bank, mostly in investment banking and then establishing full commercial banks from representative offices in Luanda Angola between 2010 and 2017. Following an 18-month period as CFO of Angola Cables, he returned to Cape Town, serving for six years as a Senior Investment Director for Arise B.V. Before joining Opaia, Hugo was the CEO of a Fintech, embedded revenue based funding startup for two and half years.
