13.3% of NSE’s 2017 Stockbroking Value Drove By Meristem
Meristem Securities Limited was responsible for 13.3 per cent of the value of stocks traded on the floor of the Nigerian Stock Exchange in 2017 by top 10 firms, making it the second leading stockbroking house for the year.
The company handled N338,611,814,121.10 worth of shares for the period under review.
A couple of major deals in 2017 were said to have driven the company’s share of stockbroking value. The value of transactions at the stock market surged by 1,295 per cent on December 18 following a huge investment made in Dangote Cement Plc and facilitated by Meristem Securities.
Investors were said to have committed N127.933bn on 752.113 million shares in 3,576 deals on that day, up from N9.173bn invested in 425.245 million shares in 4,104 deals recorded on the previous market session.
Dangote Cement had accounted for 96 per cent of the transaction value as investors invested N124bn on about 551 million shares of the cement firm.
Meristem Securities, on November 13, had facilitated another deal for Dangote Cement, which attracted another set of foreign investors who staked over N27bn on about 128.992 million units of the cement company’s shares.
The transaction lifted the overall value of trading in the market to N30.023bn as 336.335 million shares were traded in 3,778 deals on that day.
Dangote Cement share price rose to N238 from N229.01, appreciating by 3.93 per cent.
Dangote Cement alone accounted for N27.082bn staked on 129.923 million shares in 238 deals, which is about 90 per cent of the day’s transaction value. The investors were said to be Dubai-based.
In August of the same year, Meristem Securities also facilitated N87.4bn investment in Dangote Cement, which was again responsible for N124bn investment recorded on the day of the transaction.
Meanwhile, Stanbic IBTC Stockbrokers Limited handled N403,491,575,377.68 worth of shares to control 15.85 per cent of trade value.
After Meristem Securities, CSL Stockbrokers Limited, Rencap Securities (Nigeria) Limited and Cordros Securities Limited followed, recording N312,789,014,568.75 N234,642,377,980.64 and N218,409,283,736.45 of the sharebroking value for the period, respectively.
In 2016, MeriTrade, an online trading portal by Meristem Securities, emerged first in a survey carried out on online trading portals in the Nigerian stock market by Proshare Limited. Easy Trade by Investment One came second while Afrinvestor by Afrinvest Securities Limited came third.
According to Proshare, the online portal survey was carried out between November 4 and 22, 2016. Proshare carried out a customer survey for 18 days in order to get direct feedback from customers that make use of the various platforms.
