Business
SEC Approves New Listings Rules For Exchange
The Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) has recorded another milestone in its quest at repositioning itself for better performance as the amendment it proposed to its listing rules has been approved by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the nation’s apex capital market regulator.
The NSE has 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 government 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.
A fundamental requirement to drive these initiatives is a set of listings rules that are attractive to quality issuers on both the Main Board and the Alternative Securities Market (ASeM).
The Chief Executive Officer of The Nigerian Stock Exchange, Oscar Onyema said that The NSE embarked on reviewing the listings rules because some of the stakeholders of The Exchange including prospects, listed companies, issuing houses, and brokers assert that the listings rules of The NSE are inflexible.
According to Onyema, “the requirement that companies must have a five-year financial and operating track record has been cited as hindrance to many companies that would have been listed on The Exchange. Specifically, this is said to have led to the exclusion of some exploration and production companies which are not in a position to provide such records”.
The NSE boss explained further: “Our research reflects that many leading exchanges have greater flexibility than we do, particularly on the quantitative requirements in the area of profit, market capitalisation, price, public float, among others”.
The General Manager, Listings Sales and Retention, Mrs. Taba Peterside, explained that the main board listing requirements for New York Stock Exchange, London Stock Exchange, Johannesburg Stock Exchange, Singapore Stock Exchange, NASDAQ and other leading exchanges were reviewed vis-a-vis The Exchange’s; stressing that alternative board listing requirements for Alternext (New York Stock Exchange), AIM (London Stock Exchange), AltX (Johannesburg Stock Exchange), ACE (Malaysia Stock Exchange), Catalist (Singapore Stock Exchange) and other leading exchanges were also reviewed vis-a-vis ASeM.
Shedding more light on the amendment, Peterside said that the new rules determined quantitative criteria suitable for The Exchange from comparison with other exchanges and an analysis of current listed companies over a three-year period.
The exchange also consulted widely with existing listed companies, prospects and other industry stakeholders. She expressed the belief that the new listing requirements will act as a major catalyst to attracting new companies to list on The Exchange.