Some stakeholders in the capital market on Wednesday called for sustained confidence building to achieve 500 listed firms on the Nigerian Stock Exchange by 2018.
Thank you for reading this post, don't forget to subscribe!The stakeholders also called for compulsory listing of multinationals on the NSE.
They told the News Agency of Nigeria in Lagos that these and other steps were necessary to achieve the goal of NSE by 2018.
NAN reports that Ms Arunma Oteh, SEC Director-General, recently said that the NSE was targeting to list 500 companies in the next five years.
Oteh said the NSE was also targeting market capitalisation of one trillion dollars by 2016.
She said that the bourse needed companies in the oil and gas, power and telecommunications sectors to list their shares on NSE to meet the target.
According to the NSE, the number of listed companies declined to 194 in 2012 from 198 in 2011.
Mr Harrison Owoh, the Managing Director, H J Trust & Investment Ltd., Lagos, said that government should enact a law to make listing of multinationals compulsory.
Owoh said that incentives should be given to companies seeking to list on the nation’s bourse.
According to him, the high listing fees and other requirements should be scaled down to encourage listing.
Mr Boniface Okezie, President, Progressive Shareholders Association of Nigeria, said that SEC and NSE should encourage investors that left the market during the global financial meltdown to return.
Okezie said that investors’ perception that many equities had depreciated after the meltdown was a challenge and the regulators should urgently rebuild confidence in the market.
Alhaji Rasheed Yussuf, Managing Director, Trust Yields Investment Ltd., said that the target of 500 listed companies would not be difficult if more small enterprises were listed on the NSE.
Yussuf said that the challenge would be how to convince the companies to list since many small businesses were built on family trust.
He advised the market regulators to educate potential companies on the advantages of listing.
Yussuf said that many companies shied away from listing because of issues of corporate governance and family name retention.
Mallam Garba Kurfi, the Managing Director, APT Securities and Funds Ltd., Lagos, urged SEC and NSE to embark on road shows.
Kurfi said that companies should be educated on the need to source cheaper funds from the stock market rather than depend on commercial banks.
He said that companies that floated private placement before the meltdown should be encouraged to return or trade their shares at Over-the-Counter market.
Source:Punch
