By Dipo Olowookere
The big hammer of the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) has landed on the head of Thomas Wyatt Nigeria Plc, the pioneer manufacturer of school and office stationery, exercise notebooks, hard covers, photocopy papers and large-scale printers in the country.
The company came under the radar of the stock market regulator after it failed to comply with one of the rules of listing on the exchange, which is filing financial statements at the appropriate time.
On Wednesday, August 14, 2019, the firm submitted its audited accounts for the year ended March 31, 2019 and its first quarter for the period ended June 30, 2019. This was way beyond the time it should have filed them.
For this, the NSE slammed Thomas Wyatt with a fine of N4.9 million; N2.7 million for the late filing of its full year results and N2.2 million for the late submission of the Q1 statements.
According to the NSE, it sanctioned the company “in accordance with the rules for filing of accounts and treatment of default filing, rulebook of the exchange,” which is also known as issuers’ rules.
Business Post reports that in March 2019, the NSE lifted the suspension of trading in the shares of Thomas Wyatt Nigeria Plc after an embargo on November 1, 2018, which notified the public of the suspension of six listed companies for non-compliance with the issuers’ rules.
The firm had failed to file the relevant accounts by the expiration of the cure period, which led to the suspension of the trading in the issuer’s shares on the NSE.
Adedapo Adesanya