Heavy share price gains recorded by some companies, especially Dangote Cement, and Guinness lifted the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) market capitalisation by 1.4 per cent.
Specifically, at the close of trading yesterday, the market capitalisation of listed equities increased by N175billion or 1.42 per cent to
N12.448trillion from N12.273trillion traded the previous day.
Also, the NSE All Share index grew by 507.03 basis points to 36116.10 points from 35609.07 traded on Wednesday. Investors for the day bought 222.891 million shares worth N4.168billion in 4622 deals against 281.836 million shares valued at N5.424billion exchanged hands in 4066 deals.
Analysts at Afrinvest Limited attributed the positive close to bargain hunting in stocks, which had previously declined, expressing optimism that the market will close the week in the green.
On the price movement chart, Dangote Cement Plc led the gainers table during the day, appreciating by N9.79 kobo to close at N216.91 kobo, Guinness Nigeria Plc followed with a gain of N8.94 kobo to close at N96.33 kobo.
Stanbic IBTC inched up by 1.49 kobo to close at N39.90 kobo, Nigerian Breweries gained N1.40 kobo to close at N184.00 while Flour Mills Nigeria Plc added N1.00 to close at N30.00.
On the contrary, Seplat Petroleum Development recorded the highest loss for the day, dropping by N24.10 kobo to close at N457.90 kobo, Mobil Oil trailed with a loss of N0.99 kobo to close at N165.01 kobo, NCR went down by N0.36 kobo to close at N6.97 kobo.
FBN Holdings was down by N0.26 kobo to close at N5.76 kobo while Oando plc fell by N0.23 kobo to close at N6.30 kobo. The result further showed that Sterling Bank recorded the highest volume of activities, trading 36.583 million shares worth N37.249million.
Meanwhile, the management of Oando Plc has reassured its shareholders across the country of its forthcoming 40th Annual General Meeting slated for Monday, September 11, 2017, in Uyo, Akwa Ibom State.
This follows the response by the Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC), to petitions raised by Alhaji Dahiru Mangal, and Ansbury Inc. objecting to the AGM, even as the management of Oando Plc, led by the Group Chief Executive Officer, Wale Tinubu, restates commitment to acting in the best interest of all its shareholders.
It added that Oando would continue to fully cooperate with the SEC in the discharge of its duties as the capital markets regulator.
Giving updates on the matter, Oando said in a statement, “The Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC) constituted a Special Task Team to review the petitions by Alhaji Dahiru Mangal, and Ansbury Inc. To date, the Company has fully cooperated with the SEC, availed them of all documents requested, and provided clarification and appropriate rebuttals to the issues raised.
“The Company received a letter from the SEC on Wednesday, 23rd August, 2017, requesting that Oando postpone its 40th AGM so that the Commission could look into the shareholding positions contained in the Company’s 2016 Audited Financial Statements as it was at variance with those alleged by the petitioners.
“Oando responded officially on Wednesday, 23rd August, 2017 addressing all the issues raised by the SEC, and concluded that it would not be in the best interests of the Company or our shareholders to postpone the AGM.”
“This framework therefore seeks to establish rules and risk mitigation considerations when implementing USSD for financial services offering in Nigeria.
USSD based financial transactions requires end-to-end encryption to protect the integrity of the financial information,” it stated.
To this end, it stated that all providers of USSD-based financial services shall among other things, put in place a proper message authentication mechanism to validate that request/responses are generated through authenticated users; use secure USSD communication channels with a strong encryption mechanism; and not use USSD service to relay details of other electronic banking channels (in case of banks), to their customers, to prevent compromise of other electronic banking channels through the USSD channel.
