The Nigeria Securities and Exchange Commission says there is no cause for alarm over Glaxo SmithKline Consumer Nigeria Plc, Union Bank and PZ Cussons Nigeria Plc plans to exit from the country.
It explained that companies that have left Nigeria and those planning to delist their Nigeria Stock Exchange have less than a two per cent share in the capital market.
The Director-General of the Securities and Exchange Commission, Lamido Yuguda, disclosed this during the weekend at Lagos’s third quarter post-Capital Market Committee press briefing.
He said companies are coming in droves into the country in recent months.
According to him, the new entrances into the country’s stock market have a more significant impact than the companies exiting.
He stressed that companies driving the Nigerian market in terms of market capitalization are not exiting Nigeria.
He said, “Actually, I’ll make a correction; the elephants are running in. You mentioned Union Bank and a few other companies that have exited the market. We sat down and did the math.
“If you take in the last few years, all the companies that have exited and taken their market capitalization, that is the total value of their entire shareholding; compare it with those of the new companies that came into the market; the ones who exited are less than two per cent.”
“So today in the Nigerian market, the companies that are really driving the market in terms of market capitalization are not exiting; they’re actually coming in and in droves.
“What we need to do is, given the market capitalization where it is, we actually need to raise it higher. And that was that 50 per cent target. That is what we need, to have more and more of these companies.”
Recall that in September, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, while at the G-20 summit in India, called on investors to invest in Nigeria.
Tinubu had made this call a catchphrase for each of his foreign trips.
Meanwhile, DAILY POST reports that experts in the financial sector had raised concerns about the departure of companies from Nigeria.
