The Chief Executive Officer of UT Financial Services, Prince Kofi Amoabeng has been adjudged Ghana’s most respected CEO for the year 2009.

His company, UT Financial services   also won the ultimate award of Ghana’s Most Respected Company after placing second in the previous edition.

SCANCOM Limited, Operators of MTN and UNILEVER Ghana Limited placed second and third respectively.
The other winners in the descending order were DATABANK Financial Services (which was second in the previous edition), GUINESS Ghana, MULTIMEDIA, NESTLE Ghana, COCA-COLA, ZAIN and ECOBANK, the only bank in this category.                                                                
                                                  
In the CEO category, Ken Ofori-Atta, DATABANK and Kwasi Twum of Multimedia respectively occupied the second and third places.

This category saw a couple of ties including the 10th place which was shared between David Venn of Vodafone and Ernest Bediako of Ernest Chemist. Also was the 6th position, shared between Philip Sowah of ZAIN and Joyce Aryee of the Chamber of Mines.

The other awards winners of the CEO category included

Tony Oteng Gyasi of Tropical Cables and Conductors Limited, 4th     
            
Alhaji Asoma Banda, Antrak Group 5th  
                                                              
Albert Ocran of Combert Impressions, 7th
                                             
Martin Mensah of Kasapreko, 9th

Another notable development in the CEO category was the inclusion of the CEO of an educational institution, Patrick Awuah, the Founder and President of Ashesi University who occupied the 8th position.

Mr. Prince Kofi Amoabeng, the Chief Executive of UT Financial Services, the over-all winners shared with Citi Business shared his feelings before, during and after the announcement beginning with his expectations prior to the awards.

 “I must say I was not ready but ready, I was not ready because I had won the awards last year, I felt for the sake of change, my peers were not going to nominate me again but I expected that the company will still be recognized because we’ve done so much this year… we went on the stock exchange, we bought a bank and rebranded the bank for UT bank but for me being nominated again as the Most Respectable, I was not expecting that.” He expressed.

When asked how he felt when the results were been announced from time to time and his name was not mentioned.

The Country Manager of Synovate, the Research Group, Mr. Philip Okullo first announced a doubled sample-size for survey in this edition and the challenges they faced in the process.

According to him, “out of 500 invitations, we managed to access 208 CEOs as compared to 103 in the previous surveys because we went to all the regions; we didn’t concentrate on only Accra.”

The bi-annual awards is organised by Price Water House Coopers (PWC) in collaboration with the Business and Financial Times (B&FT).  

The Country Senior-Partner of PWC, Felix Addo in his general assessment of the participation by CEO’s indicated to Citi Business, this second edition of the awards has been an improvement over that of the previous one except for a few who due to some reasons beyond their control like flight arrangements  could not attend.