N25bn: Issuing Houses to Assist Banks
By Uche Obike and Tunyosola Ayansiji
There were indications that Issuing Houses in the country were already putting in place strategies that will enable them facilitate smooth raising of fresh funds by banks from the nation's capital market.
Speaking recently at the Annual General Meeting of the Association of Issuing Houses of Nigeria (AIHN), the Chairman of the Association and Chief Executive Officer of BGL Limited, Mr. Albert E. Okumagba disclosed that at their proposed meeting with the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Professor Charles Soludo, members will talk about the issue of N25 billion capitalisation since the issuing houses were going to be playing major role by taking some of the firms to the market through either Initial Public Offer (IPO) or Rights Issue.
"We will also ask him about what the CBN will do in supporting the process of deepening the capital market, how he and the Federal Ministry of Finance and other bodies are currently working on the number of mergers to deeply broaden the scope of number of money market," Okumagba said.
He further disclosed that the Association will continue the aligning process with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) for the purpose of financial institutions' training centre.
He noted that the Issuing Houses realised the challenges for issuing houses challenges that were not banks.
"We will monitor developments and make sure that the environment for doing this operational activity is improved so that when we have this mandate, we will be in a better position to deliver the mandate." he said.
Reviewing the activities of the Association during the year ended December 31, 2003, Okumagba disclosed that the level subscription went down slightly from N1.7 million in 2002 to N1.4 million.
"The reason is very clear and what happened was that when we first came in, we found that majority of the members were not paying their dues and this was mainly because nobody was putting any pressure on them and we also needed to give direction to the association for people to take us seriously; and, I think we did that very well in 2002, most of the outstanding bank loans were collected from the members," he explained.
Explaining further, he said that "we made up from income we got from various seminars that we held. If you look at the expenditure side, you will see that we did very well. We tried to save as much money as possible and that has accumulated to fund increasing of another N2 million during the year so we now have up to N6.4 million. Now that we have a fairly strong financial position, we'll continue to do the association programme more easily without running to everybody and we will also make use of the members of the association like First Bank, IBTC and the various other members for sponsorship when we have programmes."
Meanwhile, new officers were elected during the recent AGM to run the Association for the next two years.
Okumagba was returned unopposed to the position of Chairman, while Mr. Wale Oluwo (Prudent Bank Plc) was elected Vice Chairman, Director of Publicity went to Mr. Kalu Ajah who works with FSB International Bank Plc, the position of Director of Treasury went to Rekiya Isa, who was also returned unopposed. She works with FBN Merchant Bankers. Other officers elected included Assistant Director of Administration, Abiodun Oni of Intercontinental Securities, Director of Administration, Kemi Awodein of Denhan Management Limited. Mr. Victor Ogiemwonyi of Partnership Investment Limited was elected Director of Finance.
|
