The NASD OTC Securities Exchange hostedits first annual business breakfast meeting on February 7, 2019.
The event was held at the La Scala restaurant, Muson Centre in Lagos and attended by dignitaries from various sectors ranging from the capital market, Oil Sector, and government agencies.
Dr Doyin Salami, Associate Professor and full-time member of the faculty at the Lagos Business School and former member of the Central Bank of Nigeria’s Monetary Policy Committee, was the Keynote Speaker at the event. He highlighted the different factors that would drive Nigeria’s economy in 2019; such as the price of oil, a successful general election, the policy direction of the winner of the forthcoming election.
He emphasised that whilst Saudi Arabia is oil-rich, Nigeria could best be described as oil dependent. To support his argument, he explained that Nigeria produces 2million barrels per day, 800million barrels per year for 200million people, which is four barrels of crude oil per person in a year. With a conservative mindset, Saudi Arabia produces 10million barrels of crude oil per day, for 30million people. That translates to 120 barrels per person in a year. Thus, for waking up every morning, each Saudi is entitled to roughly six thousand US dollars.
Dr Doyin Salami’s closing remarks on the Outlook 2019 was that “it’s not cloudy, it won’t rain, but the sun is not about to come out anytime soon”.
Managing Director, NASD Plc, Bola Ajomale in his remarks stated that trading activities on the platform had increased tremendously in the past year (2018), with the platform recording huge external capital inflow into the country in the form of long-term investments, rather than trading capital in the last three years, “It is not money that came in and went out because they want to make returns, it was money that came in because they want to assist the company to grow. So we have seen a lot of growth, and investment and as time goes on, this kind of investment we will seek to make dividend rather than to sell them when the exchange rate moves,” he said.
“In 2018, NASD launched three platforms, all of them fully indigenous, built by Nigerian enterprises, because NASD has an industry that is growing. The first is a capital raise platform, which is the enterprise portal, the second is the trading platform, which allows brokers to trade from any part of the world at any time, using any device and the third is creating an information portal where people can observe the market within a couple of minutes. Here you will be engaged with the market without logging into the market,” he said.
Speaking on the NASD Enterprise Portal (NASDeP), Mr. Ajomale explained that due to the investment growth witnessed in the past few years, the company decided to launch an enterprise portal, to boost investment in small enterprises in Nigeria, by enabling private equities and foreign investors to come into the country looking for opportunities to invest in and help the country grow. NASD is embracing and encouraging that aspect of the market so that when these companies grow, we expect they would come to the OTC market as a natural migration.
NASD PLC also gave out awards to the biggest performers on its Over-The-Counter (OTC) Exchange Market. The award categories and winners include the following:
- Dealer of the Year: Chapel Hill Denham Securities Limited for brokering the deal of the year; 99.03% acquisition of Ensure Insurance Plc by Allianz Group
- Most Active participating institution by number of deals traded: Apel Asset Limited
- Most Compliant Security: Central Securities Clearing Systems PLC (CSCS)
- Highest price appreciation security 2018: Niger Delta Exploration and Production Company PLC (NDEP)
- Most Actively Traded Security: Central Securities Clearing Systems PLC (CSCS)
- Most Active Participating Institution by Value: AFRINVEST Securities Limited