By Aduragbemi Omiyale
One of the major players in the Nigerian capital market, FMDQ, has changed its name from FMDQ Holdings Plc to FMDQ Group Plc.
A notice from the company disclosed that the transformation became effective Wednesday, February 2, 2022.
However, the company emphasised in the statement that “there are no changes to our business operations, governance structure, corporate structure or any other aspect of the business as a result of the name change.”
It was explained that the decision to change the name of the organisation was to position the firm to consolidate on its vision “to be the leading African builder of ecosystems of financial infrastructure and services for markets.”
FMDQ was established in 2013 as FMDQ OTC Plc and it “evolved over the years from an OTC Market to a full-fledged securities exchange, to a budding financial market infrastructure (FMI Group, now structured as a Securities Exchange Commission (SEC)-registered capital market holding company.”
It currently warehouses five wholly-owned subsidiaries, including FMDQ Securities Exchange Limited (Nigeria’s largest exchange by market turnover, with an annual average of N166 trillion), FMDQ Clear Limited (Nigeria’s only operating central counterparty, with over $60 billion derivatives contracts cleared), FMDQ Depository Limited (Nigeria’s integrated securities depository), FMDQ Private Markets Limited (Nigeria’s private capital marketplace organiser) and iQx Consult Limited (an information technology services company).
In the notice received by Business Post, FMDQ Group said it is strategically positioned to “provide registration, listing, quotation and noting services, integrated trading, clearing and central counterparty, settlement, risk management for financial market transactions, and depository of securities as well as data and information services across the debt capital, foreign exchange, derivatives and equity capital markets, through its wholly-owned subsidiaries.”
This would be made easy because of its status “as a technology-enabled and systemically important FMI Group in Africa’s financial market landscape.”