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The Securities and Exchange Commission has said the implementation of its agreement with the Pan-African Payment Settlement System will encourage intra-African trade and aid diversification within the capital market.

A statement by SEC on Sunday quoted the Head of the Office of the Chief Economist of SEC, Dr. Okey Umeano, as saying this in Abuja.

The Nigerian Exchange Limited and the Pan-African Payment Settlement System in February signed a Memorandum of Understanding to support cross-border payments across capital markets in Africa.

According to Umeano, the implementation of the MoU will make it easy to trade across Africa.

He said, “This MoU begins to implement something that we have been very excited about. PAPSS makes it easy to trade across Africa. It makes Intra-African trade more efficient and we have always wanted it. It was created initially for just the usual everyday trade but we have always wanted it for the capital market because we think that if we can link the exchanges and the markets across the continent we will have a bigger opportunity set for everybody, so we have been working on that.”

The Central Bank of Nigeria has approved in principle for Zenith Bank to operate as a financial holding company.

In a statement signed by the Company Secretary, Michael Otu, on Friday, the bank revealed plans to change its organisational structure.

With this change, the organisation will have a banking subsidiary along with other subsidiaries in the financial services sector.

Part of the statement read, “The CBN has granted approval-in-principle for Zenith Bank to operate a non-operating financial holding company structure.

“Furthermore, the CBN approved Mr Jim Ovia as the Chairman of Zenith Holdco Plc (in-formation and for Mr Jim Ovia to also continue as the Chairman of Zenith Bank until the commencement of Zenith Holdco.”

This move will increase the number of banks operating as financial holding companies in the country.

A substantial shareholder of the Nigerian Exchange Group, Miri Strategic Emerging Markets Fund LP, has bought over N38m shares of the Group.

This was revealed in a notice on insider trading issued on Tuesday. It said the Fund bought 1,480,000 units of NGX Group shares at N26.09 per share.

In the financial year 2022, the NGX group had recorded a dip in its profit after tax, which went from N2.248bn in 2021 to N698.482m in 2022. No dividend was declared in the last financial year.

Their revenue however increased by 6.8 per cent to N6.17bn in 2022 from N5.777bn recorded the previous year.

The Nigerian Exchange Limited dipped slightly on Tuesday as investors lost about N1bn at the end of trading.

The All-Share Index depreciated to 55.603.94 on Tuesday from Monday’s record of 55,605.57. The Market capitalisation also dipped to N30.290tn from N30.291tn recorded on Monday.

The volume of shares traded on the Exchange improved by 29 per cent as 159,460,465 million shares worth N 2.475bn were traded in 4,187 deals.

By breadth, the market sentiment was negative, as 22 equities lost while 10 equities gained.

MRS, NCR and Mulitiverse recorded the highest losses of the day having declined in share value by 10.00 per cent, 9.88 per cent and 9.85 per cent respectively, while Caverton, UACN topped the gainers’ table as their share prices appreciated by 9.62 per cent and 7.60 per cent respectively.

Zenith Bank was the most traded stock on the floor of the exchange on Tuesday followed by GTCO and MTN Nigeria which closed at N25.95, N26.20 and N248 respectively.

After a ground breaking election held in Nigeria on February 25, 2023 where three (3) solid candidates vied for Presidency, a victor has emerged. The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has declared Bola Ahmed Tinubu, the candidate of Nigeria’s ruling party, APC, as the winner of presidential election.

Mr. Bola Tinubu defeated 17 other candidates who contested the election and amassed a total vote of 8,794,726 votes, the highest of all the candidates thus meeting the first constitutional requirement to be declared winner. He also scored over 25 per cent of the votes cast in 30 states, dusting the 24 required constitutionally. His closest contender was Atiku Abubakar of the PDP polling 6,984,520 votes, while Peter Obi of Labour Party came third with 6,101,533 votes rounding up the top three.

Effect on Capital Market
In the build up to the declaration, Nigeria bonds were gaining as Mr. Tinubu took an early lead in presidential election race. According to a Bloomberg report, investors bet that Bola Tinubu will have a favorable impact on the economy, with the ability to offer reforms to pull Nigeria out of its current fiscal mess.

In the equities market, bullish sentiments continued from last week ended February 24, 2023 (+2.13% week on week) into this week as the local bourse gained +0.69 on Monday and +0.86 on Tuesday. We expect this bullish sentiment to continue to end the week.