- Capital Market Holds Good Prospects for Investors ― ASHON
The Chairman, Association of Stockbroking Houses of Nigeria, Chief Patrick Ezeagu, says the nation’s capital market holds good prospects for investors, despite the downturn being experienced.
Ezeagu, while speaking at the association’s 9th Annual General Meeting in Lagos, expressed optimism that the fundamentals of the market remained strong with good prospects for investors, even though the operating environment was tough.
He said he was convinced that there was a positive outlook for the market in the near term given the sustained rise in oil prices, stable foreign exchange rate and availability of forex.
He stated that the association had come of age and that some initiatives had been put in place to strengthen the advocacy functions in line with the operational philosophy.
According to him, ASHON recruited the Executive Secretary, Mr Athan Ogbozor, to run the secretariat as part of the strategic plan to leverage human capital to drive the new initiatives designed to enhance service delivery to the members.
He said some of the new initiatives were the recruitment of strategic personnel, the registration with the Securities and Exchange Commission as a trade group; promotion of commodities and futures exchange; negotiation of members’ interest on the ongoing demutualisation of the Nigerian Stock Exchange, and strengthening of relationship with other trading platforms to expand income generation of the members beyond the NSE.
Ezeagu said, “We have recruited an executive secretary and research officer to effectively operationalise the decision of executive members in the service to our members. We have also formally registered the association as a trade group with SEC.
“ASHON has also successfully handled the tension raised by the pressure mounted on its members by the Federal Inland Revenue Service and the Nigerian Postal Service, as regards the payment of contract stamp duty.
“We are advocating the abolition of contract stamp in our market and negotiating a new regime of fees for brokers and discussing back office and cloud hosting.”