Modupe Gbadeyanka
By Modupe Gbadeyanka
Members of the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) will gather on Tuesday, March 3, 2020 for a court ordered meeting concerning its planned demutualisation after it received an order of the Federal High Court sitting in Lagos on January 20, 2020 to convene the meeting.
At a presentation of the market outlook for 2020 last month, the chief executive of the exchange, Mr Oscar Onyema, had informed stakeholders of the market that the NSE had received a ‘no objection’ for the demutualisation from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the highest regulator in the nation’s capital market.
The demutualisation aims to change the status of the exchange from a non-profit, member/brokers owned mutual exchange into a profit seeking shareholder corporation, open to members of the public.
A bill was recently passed by the National Assembly to give it a legal backing, while President Muhammadu Buhari signed the bill into an act, giving the exchange the opportunity to become a Public Limited Company (PLC) like other firms listed on its trading platform.
At the March 3, 2020 meeting, members of the exchange would be required to pass a resolution to convert the NSE from a company limited by guarantee to a company limited by shares and then re-registered it as a public company in the name Nigerian Exchange Group Plc.
In addition, these members, whose names were included in the register of members as at May 11, 2017, would be asked to approve a share capital of N1.25 billion comprising 2.50 billion ordinary shares of 50 kobo each be registered with the Corporate Affairs Commission for Nigerian Exchange Group Plc.
