16 Public Offers Worth N980bn Approved in 2007 –SEC

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) approved 16 public offers of 39 billion units, worth N980 billion last year, according to its Director General, Malam Musa Al-Faki.
In his new year message to members of staff, a copy of which was made available to the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) yesterday in Abuja, Al-Faki said the capital market recorded a robust performance.

He said 11 other offers totaling 801 billion units of shares valued at N239 billion were rights issues in the primary market. Al-Faki said 51 applications were approved last year as against 49 in 2006.
“The year also recorded six private placements of eight million units of shares valued at N2.6 billion and nine supplementary offers of 1.9 billion units of shares worth N2.4 billion,'' he said.

According to the DG, two conversions of loans to equity of 4 billion units of shares valued at N46 billion were also recorded. “Twenty four bonus issues of 22 billion units of shares worth N36 billion and five existing securities of 22 billion units of shares valued at N11 billion were registered,'' he added.
In the secondary market, Al-Faki said, there was a turn-over of 128.5 billion units of shares worth N1.92 trillion between January and November.
“This represented a 250 per cent increaseover the 33 billion shares turn over worthN427 billion achieved in 2006.``The all-share index also recorded an increaseof 21,025.98 points or 36.4 per cent. Opening at33,163 points in January, it closed at 54,189.92points as at Nov. 30, 2007,'' he said.Offers - - 3Al-Faki said the market capitalisationof listed securities (equity only) which stoodat N4.22 trillion in January 2007 rose toN9.11 trillion as at the end of November,representing an increase of 116 per cent.He said the remarkable increase in themarket was attributable to price appreciationrecorded by the ``high-fly in capitalisedstocks''.``Twenty new listings, comprising equitiesand bonds were recorded in the outgoing year.There were 60 supplementary listings whilesix were delisted,'' Al-Faki said.On collective investment schemes, hesaid five were still being processedadding that the number of approvedexisting venture capital companiesstood at 10 throughout the year.``Out of this number only four managinga total of N5 billion remained activeas at the end of 2007,'' he said.SEC - - 4Al-Faki pointed out that a new dimensionto public issues was witnessed in 2007with the introduction of the GlobalDepository Receipts (GDR).According to him, GDR allows

Nigeriancompanies to be quoted in stock marketsoutside the country.``A total of seven GDRs were issued inthe course of the year, out of thesefive were valued at 1.9 billion dollarswhile two were worth 404.3 milliondollars,'' he said.To further deepen the market, the DGsaid the commission would focus onstimulating activities in the bondmarket, particularly the corporatebonds.``Other actions to further deepen themarket and also aim at meetinggovernment public housing programme,were the introduction ofmortgage-backed securities (MBS) andReal Estate Investment Trust,'' headded.