SEC okays amendment to listing rules

THE House of Representatives will tomorrow begin public hearing on the state of the Nigerian capital market.

Meanwhile, the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) also announced at the weekend that the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has approved its proposed amendments to listing rules.

Chairman of the House of Representatives Committee on Capital Market and Institutions, Herman Hembe, disclosed yesterday that the committee had received “several” memoranda from members of the public on the state of the Nigerian market.

The House of Representatives had in December 2011 directed its Committee on Capital Market and Institutions to carry out a thorough investigation to identify the sector’s manifest problems.

The public hearing is also expected to identify what is responsible for the investors’ apathy and other issues related to the problems in the Nigerian capital market.

All stakeholders, including stockbrokers, shareholders’ groups, registrars, issuing houses, among others, are expected to make presentations to the panel.

The House of Representatives’ decision followed a motion by Hembe who last December lamented that the anticipated economic growth in the country would not be fulfilled if the capital market remained in its comatose state.

Hembe, who brought the motion under matter of urgent national importance, noted that although the capital market was the backbone of the economy of any nation, the capital market in Nigeria had continued to witness some trend in the last four years.

He warned that for the projected economic growth envisioned by President Goodluck Jonathan during his budget presentation to be realised, “it is imperative that we work assiduously to get the capital market back to its desirable heights.”

The NSE explained at the weekend that the approved amendment to its listing rules was another milestone in its quest at repositioning itself for better performance.

It said that it recently embarked on a number of new initiatives, including: Reinvigorating business development in order to achieve a market capitalisation of $1 trillion in five years; paying more attention to rule drafting and interpretation for market participants; aggressively pursuing the listing of privatised gover- nment entities and significant corporations in different sectors; reviewing the current market segmentation to be more reflective of global industry classifications as well as increasing market accessibility to attract greater foreign participation, among others.

Meanwhile, barring any last minute changes, operatives of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) and other anti-graft agencies are set to participate in the House’s public hearing on the capital market.

Hembe disclosed that the committee has received several petitions from various shareholders varying from acquisition and merger of some banks as well as activities of capital market regulators.

He added: “We are going to look at these critically and believe me, we are going to get into the root of it. We have invited agencies that ordinarily should prosecute this kind of situation, EFCC for instance, we are hoping that the attendance of EFCC at the probe that is starting tomorrow, they will get first hand information from what we are doing and will ensure that people who are found culpable at the end of the day are prosecuted because this committee has documents before us that show to us that they have done things wrongly and people continue to do things wrongly threatening the security of this market.”

-Guardian

Posted by admin on Mar 11 2012. Filed under House, Legislature. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry