In line with the recommendations of the Presidential Advisory Committee
on the Nigerian capital market, the Securities and Exchange Commission
(SEC) has approved three companies to operate as market makers to
operate in the nation’s capital market. Lanre Oloyi, head of media of
the commission, said out of the three firms, one is duly registered
while the
two others are at the final stage of the registration process.
The
three firms whose applications were approved by the commission were
chosen from the list of fifteen firms that had so far submitted their
application to act as market makers. Market makers are wholesale
operators who create liquidity in the stock market by either buying
shares when there is a glut or selling shares when there is scarcity.
The
spokesperson of SEC confirmed to BusinessDay, weekend that so far only
three firms have scaled through to operate as market makers, though
declined to indicate the names of the firms whose application were been
considered. Explaining further, he said, “At the appropriate time, the
SEC will announce the names of the firms that have been approved and
given license to operate. Of the three firms, one has been given final
license while two others just scaled through the screening process by
the commission during the week. The commission is still going through
other applications for consideration.”
He, however, assured the
investing public that the Nigerian stock market is still safe and
healthy, saying “the global financial market crisis only affected our
market minimally.”
Speaking at a workshop for Capital Market
Correspondents at Ijebu Ode, Ogun State, Oloyi, who represented
director-general of SEC, Musa Al-Faki, said “there was no crisis in the
Nigerian stock market as it was in the global market, what we had was
market correction. The Nigerian stock market was only correcting itself
and now that the stock prices have reached its bottom peak, it has
started rising again. T
herefore, the commission is quite confident
about the market and does not see the rebound as a surprise. This is
because the fundamentals of our quoted companies are very strong and
intact.”
He further appealed to newsmen to be very objective in
their reports about the market because of its sensitivity. Our market
is quite peculiar from other advanced markets. We never had crisis in
our market because of the regulations put in place. When the global
financial crisis started, our market was moving well, until after
several months before it stated dropping because of over speculation.
So, it is now correcting itself and there is no need to panic.
Source:Businessday Newspaper 17 NOV, 2008
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