The Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) has reiterated its commitment to ensure that the demutualisation exercise is concluded this year, even as it has become one of the top three projects targeted during the period.

The Chief Executive Officer of the bourse, Oscar Onyema, said: “Demutualisation is a very long process and you don’t demutualise in a vacuum but with an appropriate regulation. The Exchange has a framework and that framework resulted to selecting financial advisers and work is ongoing.
“We are raising it as one of the top three projects and hopefully we would deliver it in 2016.”
Demutualisation of the stock exchange is aimed at transforming it into a Public Limited Liability Company, and by implication, a profit-making organisation to be listed on itself and any other Exchange around the world.

The exercise, when completed, would give the investing public the opportunity to trade on the shares of the Exchange, like any other quoted company.

Capital market stakeholders, in a recent interview with The Guardian, had urged the leadership of the nation’s bourse to ensure that the process is ‘all inclusive’ and transparent.
According to them, when membership of the NSE is opened to majority of Nigerians and they are called upon to own shares in the stock market, it would help to publicise the activities in the market, give investors a ‘sense of belonging’ and more local investors would be encouraged participate.

They noted that with demutualisation, the ownership structure of the NSE would be properly put in place to ensure good corporate governance, which would boost investor’s confidence in the market.

The President of the Progressive Shareholders Association of Nigeria, Boniface Okezie, said the exercise would attract more local and retail investors into the stock market, if carried out in an ‘all inclusive’ and transparent manner.
“If the process will carry all Nigerians along and one person will not own Nigerian Stock Exchange, convert it to his own private estate, if the whole thing will go round to all Nigerians, that will foster growth because it will woo more local investors to the market.
“Stock exchange is non-governmental, non-profit organisation, so if it is demutualised and quoted as Plc, they will begin to make money because the private people now own it,” he said.

To the Managing Director of Stanwal Securities Limited, Augustine Ofonagoro, demutualisation would go a long way to reduce overdependence on foreign investors, because it would attract local investors to the Nigerian stock market.
“As NSE demutualises and sell its own shares to the people, more people will know what is happening there and they will bring all the money they are stocking else where here, because they will believe that the place belongs to them. Right now, many of them think it is a government enterprise,” he said.

According to him, there was need for the management of NSE to create awareness on the activities at the Exchange, focusing more on local investors than foreign ones.
“Focusing more on foreign investors does not augur well for the country, because all they are looking at is their own pocket. They are not interested in the development of Nigeria.
“If anything goes wrong in their country, like in the last global financial meltdown, they would sell off their investment in Nigeria and the Nigerian Stock Market would be at the receiving end.’’

The former Director-General of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Ms. Arunma Oteh, had assured stakeholders that the exercise would be carried out in a transparent manner.
She explained that the process would be transparent to enable the owners of the Exchange get real value on investment at the end of the exercise.

According to her, demutualisation was essential for the future of the Exchange, adding that it was important for the process to be carried out in a manner that would allow stakeholders to have confidence in the system.