The Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) will encounter a new boost following the decision of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to get oil and gas companies to list their shares on the Stock Exchange. High priority firms on this list are the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation and the Nigeria LNG.
The Details: This disclosure was made by the acting Director-General, SEC, Mary Uduk at the World Bank/International Monetary Fund annual meeting in Washington DC. Uduk added that a few offshore companies wanted to also list their shares.
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This is coming after the dual listing of MTN Nigeria and Airtel shares on the NSE which spiked the interest of foreign issuers in the Nigerian Capital market.
“The primary market has witnessed a new trend in the last one year with the listing of the telecom companies (MTN Nigeria) and also the recent initial public offer and dual listing of Airtel. The dual listing of Airtel signifies the interest of the foreign issuers in the Nigerian capital market. Consequent to the Airtel IPO, some offshore companies are in discussion with the commission for an IPO that will be dually listed in Nigeria and the United Kingdom,” she said.
Why this matters: Uduk noted that the motive of attracting big players in the oil and gas sector to list their shares on the Nigerian bourse was to further give the capital market a boost and make it more attractive to investors.
Meanwhile, Uduk noted that rules to enable foreign issuers to list their shares on the Stock Exchange had been reviewed, adding that technology was being employed to deepen product innovation.
“As you are very aware, companies must have good governance structure and be run properly for them to be profitable and sustainable.”
She also added that transparency methods are much better currently as several firms have begun to disclose their level of compliance to corporate governance practices.
“Now that we have a national (corporate governance) code, we expect to see high level of compliance because we have a national code now in addition re are other cases we are looking into that will become public in due time.”
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A Nairametrics report disclosed how SEC proposed to protect investors from high charges in the capital market so that investors would not bear unnecessary costs on their transactions. It sought to do that via boosting investors’ confidence and encouraging investors to take ownership of their investments.
This is good, it’s a boost to me developing interest to buying shares from the oil industry.