Diana Layfield has been Group Head of Strategy and Corporate Development – acquisitions, alliances, mergers and disposals – since 2009, with global responsibility across Standard Chartered’s businesses, products and geographies for Group Strategy, working closely with the Group CEO, CFO and Board.

She has held a number of senior management roles since joining the Bank in 2004, including Chief Operating Officer for Wholesale Banking and as Group Head, Global Corporates.

Diana Layfield

Prior to joining Standard Chartered, Diana was CEO of Finexia Ltd, a technology company providing outsourced services and software for the commercial finance industry, between 2000 and 2004.

Also she worked for McKinsey & Co (1995-2000), as well as piloting relief planes for the International Committee of the Red Cross / UN in Africa (1998-99). She was educated at the University of Oxford and Harvard University

Last week at the Economic summit, she spoke to Esther Onyegbula on several issues relating to the economic summit, benefits of the two day conference to economic development in the Africa region.

How would you rate the economic summit?
I think this has been an enormous successful conference in a number of ways, first is the level of attendance: there are entrepreneurs, officials from the Nigeria government, ministers and president and also the former Brazilian president.

The presence of these high profile people gave the conference a nice touch and the various sessions have been very interactive. Most importantly the opportunity to hear the ministers speak has tremendous and I think it is a great success.

In terms of the exposure of people and platform it has generated it has been a tremendous success.

The second thing that has been useful is the opportunity to share views among some key issues presently facing Nigeria and I think in that respect has been a great opportunity.

In your views do you think that this conference will yield desired result that will impact the Nigeria economy?

I think it is a great question as to what that result is, but in the long term I think all of these things increase the perception in the rest of the world of the progress that Nigeria is making and that is a hugely positive thing.

Like Segun Agaga said, I believe that Nigeria is the next great frontier in the world economy, with enormous opportunities. In the future Nigeria would be the economic power house in the region.

Economists differ to what they think, but we believe by 2030 at least Nigeria would be the largest economy in Africa. And Africa itself would be a hugely importing economic region for the world. So anything that raises the understanding of that and actually gives a platform to demonstrate that progress has got to be positive to the country.

From your perceptive how would your firm help Nigeria economy achieve this?
The first thing is how we can help our client develop, how we can help businesses in Nigeria develop not only locally but also develop their link with the rest of the world.

The fact that we offer unique facilities in the market that has the ability to link Africa corporate and Asia, Asia in the Middle East and the US. With Asia in particular as a distinctive link. One of the things that we talked about today is that Nigeria needs to be a producing nation and an exporting nation.

So it needs to move from just being an importing nation to a nation that manufactures goods and exports goods. Which is all about reforming the economy and financing the economy and we can play our part in that.

What exactly would be the outcome and benefits of the regional integration that has been advocated in this conference for Nigeria?

I think the advantage of regional integration for Nigeria is increasing its market size and its ability to specialize. If you think about industrial development historically, the ability to have a large market where people, would form specialist in these trades was incredibly important in development in almost every countries in the world, whether recently, in Asia or a long time ago in Europe, so just the share scale that they bring to Nigeria will be helpful.

It will help in bothers security, because we have seen less conflict in bothers where there is effective trade. From scale, to security to social development, to the people who would be increasingly been employed and the population, these are all key benefits.

As a major player in Africa finance how would this impact in the operations of Standard Chartered Bank?

The first thing to say is that this isn’t new to us so, here we celebrate a hundred and fifty years in the continent of Africa, in most of the markets we have been there for over fifty years and in many of them for over a hundred years so this is not a new discovery or a new emergence.

It also important to understand that ninety seven percent of our workforces in Africa are Africans. We are very much a local bank in our market as well as an international bank. For us we see are development as symbiotic with the rest of the continent. We can’t imagine a development at fast rate without those economies developing at a similar rate, so for us it is how we help development in those economies.

For a young woman who is in the peak of her career, how have you been able to balance family life and work life?

It isn’t easy and I still have two small kids. I think women probably need to have more discipline with their time than men. A lot of it is about determination and one of the groups that I have seen in the world that has the highest determination is actually Nigerian women.

I said to someone recently, that it is a brave man that stands in the way of a Nigerian woman. For me I think it is about deciding what you want and setting your goals. And not allowing people get in your way.