Archive for the 'Stock Exchanges' Category
May 2nd, 2013 by Tom Minney
Tanzanian news media yesterday (1 May) released the news that 37-year old Moremi Marwa has been appointed as the new CEO of the Dar es Salaam Stock Exchange (www.dse.co.tz). According to this news report on Tanzania Daily News, Marwa was selected by the DSE governing board in mid-March, after the post had been advertised earlier (see this blog post), and is the first stockbroker to manage the East African securities exchange.
He is scheduled to take up his post in mid-May, He replaces Gabriel Kitua, who resigned early in 2013 and will be the fourth CEO since the DSE began operations in April 1998. At the time of writing the news is not yet confirmed on the DSE website (1 May was holiday).
Mr Marwa was the Director and Chief Executive Officer for stockbroker Tanzania Securities Ltd. According to this bio on the TSL website, he was responsible for executing the licensed brokerage’s corporate strategy and investment policy and for discretionary mandates.
“Before he joined Tanzania Securities Limited in September 2010, Moremi was a Senior Manager in Ernst & Young’s Transaction Advisory Services. He has a significant corporate finance and investment advisory experience and has worked with a number of major clients both in the public and private sector.”
Before E&Y he was with Deloitte & Touche in Corporate Finance Services since 2006 as a business analyst. His accounting career included managing assignments such as corporate finance structuring, capital raising, transactions support, syndicated loans structuring and reviews, valuations and financial modeling, feasibility studies and business plans. His earlier career was with Barclays Bank and Bank of Africa.
Qualifications include being a Certified Public Accountant (CPA), a Masters of Business Administration in Finance (MBA) and a Bachelor of Commerce (B.Com) in Accounting. He also holds the ACI (Financial Markets Association) Treasury Operations Certificate. He is licenced by the Capital Markets & Securities Authority (CMSA) as Authorised Dealers Representative and Authorised Investment Adviser. Moremi is also a Licensed DSE Floor Trader and is a Council Member of the DSE.
Congratulations to Mr Marwa and best wishes to the DSE, well managed in the interim by Mrs Mary Mniwasa.
April 29th, 2013 by Tom Minney
Congratulations to the Zimbabwe Stock Exchange (www.zimbabwe-stock-exchange.com) on its excellent new website, launched last month, including a very useful listed companies’ data terminal. This is good work by the ZSE team and Rob Stangroom’s work at African Investor Relations and related websites. The site opens up great access to a wide range of Zimbabwean listed companies annual reports, together with trading and other useful data.
Congratulating the ZSE, Zimbabwe’s Minister of Finance, the Honourable Tendai Biti commented: “The ZSE has come of age and it is moving in the right direction with this new functional data portal. It creates a platform for international investors to obtain the latest information on investment opportunities in Zimbabwe, and we are in effect, promoting and branding Zimbabwe properly as an attractive investment destination. There is now more transparency than ever before and stakeholders’ information requirements are being met.” This is quoted in the ZSE press release on the new system
According to a post by Rob: “The new Zimbabwe Stock Exchange website / data portal has a number of unique notable features not least of which is the complete availability of all corporate data, corporate actions and company information – all of it disseminated using push technology and social media (Twitter and Facebook). Notable is the Investorpass function supplied by B2i Technologies in the USA, which enables each registrant to have their own secure repository (for 7 years) of all communications received from the Zimbabwe Stock Exchange.
“The new ZSE data portal has some handy online share charting tools for retail investors to compare the share price performance of the top 10 companies by market capitalization and any companies that are in the same sector. This may not seem significant other than the fact that information like this usually has to be paid for in Africa’s other stock exchanges.”
In the ZSE press release, Mrs Eve Gadzikwa, Chairperson of the ZSE, said: “The ZSE recognises the role of the Internet in communications in investor relations and, as part of our capacity building exercise, we are now able to respond to the needs of stakeholders who have been looking for a mechanism to obtain almost real-time information at the click of a button. Even though our organisation is a small institution, we are adopting a different approach in data dissemination which has meant a significant input into data collection, implementing functionality that ensures we achieve our objectives. We have teamed up with www.africanfinancials.com , Africa’s largest portal of online annual reports, to ensure that every annual report is available for viewing and download online immediately it is released. This is not something done in other markets. Compared with other data portal sites in Africa, ours is undoubtedly a notch above the rest.”
“Certainly, from a cost perspective, we can do away with hardcopy communications, which will save listed companies a significant amount of money and increase efficiency. On our side is international online investor relations precedent and best practice, high Internet penetration in Zimbabwe, so the pillars are there and it is a case of us getting online experience and taking it from there,” she said.
CEO of the SEC, Tafadzwa Chinamo, said he is impressed that the ZSE is now in control of its information and in charge of communicating relevant data to its stakeholders. “We can see that the necessary steps have been taken to ensure the ZSE’s online information dissemination is of a high standard and as a regulatory body, we look forward to the continued progress the Exchange will undoubtedly make in disseminating information timeously to all its stakeholders.”
According to Rob: “My involvement in online investor relations in Zimbabwe over the past 5 years has been rewarding and the launch of the ZSE Data Portal the pinnacle of this journey. I look forward to taking our integrated communications services to more listed companies and want to urge investors to consider Zimbabwean listed companies as an investment opportunity. In the ZSE Data Portal stakeholders in Zimbabwe now have a comprehensive tool to make more informed investment decisions.
Martin Matanda, Acting CEO of the ZSE, added: “The exchange is pursuing a bigger picture than just efficient information dissemination. It will be moving to a fully electronic communications’ platform.
View the ZSE data portal on www.zimbabwe-stock-exchange.com.
In January Rob’s team announced that stock exchange information was available on smart phones. The African IR App is a smartphone application that allows African stock-exchange-traded companies to optimize their investor relations (“IR”) content for iPhone, iPad and Android mobile devices. The African IR App is powered by the IRapp™, the leading investor relations app platform engine. He said that 8%-10% of investor relations website traffic came from smartphones.
April 29th, 2013 by Tom Minney
The Zimbabwe Stock Exchange (www.zimbabwe-stock-exchange.com) has informed investors and the public in a press release that it has terminated the listings of 3 companies with effect from 23 Apr 2013. In terms of Section 1.18 of the ZSE listing rules, they cannot be traded on the ZSE official list again. The companies are:
Barbican Holdings Limited
The Company was suspended in 2004 following the closure of the Company’s banking subsidiary by the Central Bank. Since then, Barbican Holdings has failed to meet its continuing obligations. No response has been received from the principals of Barbican Holdings Limited at the last known address.
TZI Limited
The Company was suspended in 2004 following a material adverse event in a Zambian subsidiary. Since then, TZI Limited has failed to meet its continuing obligations. No response has been received from the principals of TZI Limited at the last known address.
Red Star Holdings Limited
The Company requested for a suspension rather than a delisting at the time of the conclusion of a Scheme of Arrangement within the group. Since then, there has been no report of progress on the purpose of which the suspension was made. Consequently, a decision to terminate has been made.
The order was announced by the Interim Board of the ZSE.
April 25th, 2013 by Tom Minney
The Egyptian Exchange (www.egx.com.eg) is busy with workshops for mutual funds, investment banks and managers of investment institutions, aiming to boost trading volumes through better communications between market participants and listed companies.
Trading floor of Egyptian Exchange – Dec 2012 pic: ACMN, Tom Minney
The workshops gave investor relations (IR) officials of the listed companies a chance to present their work plans and investment options and the fund managers could also discuss latest developments and current market variables.
According to an EGX press release, Dr. Mohammed Omran, EGX Chairman, said the EGX is keen to boost stock market liquidity. Fund managers praised the communication with listed companies and said it adds to the disclosure provided by EGX. It gives a legal framework for officials of listed companies to answer questions from the institutional investors.
This is a high priority in the current Egyptian economy where all market participants need to work hard to keep the Egyptian Exchange strong and active capital market in the short and medium term.
February 11th, 2013 by Tom Minney
The Dar es Salaam Stock Exchange is advertising for a new CEO, see here on the DSE website for the job advertisement. The deadline is this Friday, 15 February.
The contract of the previous CEO Gabriel Kitua, expired on 31 January. Gabriel is recommended from my own experience, as a firm and results-oriented manager with vision who had the drive and hard work to make it happen. He read reports carefully and made constructive inputs and he was also pragmatic and believed in progress. We wish him all the best going forward.
Pending the new appointment, the DSE is in the capable hands of Mary Mniwasa, a lawyer who has served the DSE for long as Corporate Affairs Manager and Legal Counsel, including many key strategic and management processes.
Dar es Salaam and the Tanzanian economy are both booming with much growth still to come. The people and place are very pleasant. Closer links across the East African community are hotting up the pace of progress, modernization and integration. The DSE and its key stakeholders, the Capital Markets and Securities Authority, the Bank of Tanzania, the Government, issuers, stockbrokers and investors, are pushing processes of modernization and change including a demutualization strategy and an ambitious 5-year plan.
We wish them all the luck with the recruitment process.
January 21st, 2013 by Tom Minney
The Egyptian Exchange (EGX -www.egx.com.eg) has approved the listing of the 23rd company on Nilex (the Nile Exchange – www.nilex.com.eg), the EGX market for growing medium and small companies. A meeting of the listing committee on 17 January approved to list the shares of Al Fanar Contracting Construction Trade Import And Export Co, which has 8 million shares, at a par value of EGP1.00 (USD0.15) each, according to the Nilex news feed. The shares were due to be added to the database with effect from 20 January but were not to be traded until the company and its Nominated Advisor comply with listings requirements.
Listing standards set by the Egyptian Financial Supervisory Authority (www.efsa.gov.eg) require a disclosure report and an approved study on the fair value of the company’s shares. The company has 6 months to meet other conditions set by EFSA (Board of Directors decree no 81 of 17 Oct 2011) or its listing “should be considered as if it never took place”.
For instance, also on 17 Jan the Listing Committee decided that the listing of the shares of National Investment and Reconstruction (Nirco) shall be terminated and it should be considered never to have been listed and it was removed from the EGX database effective 20 Jan 2013.
The previous Nilex listing was International Company for Medical Industries (ICMI), approved on 30 Dec and listed on the database from 31 Dec, with a share capital of EGP4m ($604,000) at par value. Trading would wait for the requirements to be complied with. The Egyptian Modern Education Systems (MOED) was approved on 12 Dec and added to the database on 16 Dec.
Companies wishing to list on the Nilex must work with a Nominated Advisor and new rules and requirements have been issued. There are 35 approved nominated advisors listed here. According to the Nominated Advisor requirements, the Nominated Advisor acts as coordinator between issuer and the exchange, advises and helps the company on all responsibilities during the application process and after listing, helps the company fulfill ongoing disclosure obligations, informs the regulators of non-compliance, helps the company with its initial public offering, and must provide research coverage. These obligations last for 2 years from date of listing.
Nilex started trading on 3 Jun 2010 and the trading sessions were set from 11am-noon with an automatic close period from 11:50-noon. The initial listings were: El Badr Plastic; Masria Card; TN Holdings for Investment; Kato Agriculture Development Co.; Utopia Real Estate Investment and Tourism; Ameco Medical Industries; International Company for Fertilizers and Chemicals; Al Oroba Trading Mining and Supplying; Al Moasher for Programming and Information Dissemination and El-Barbary Investment Group (B.I.G) with trading suspended in the last 2 until they submitted the disclosure reports. All started trading at par value.
According to the latest market report (posted 21 Jan here but updating daily on this link), the most active company yesterday was Marseille Almasreia Alkhalegeya For Holding Investment with 34 trades totaling EGP141,061 ($21,300) in value, followed by Utopia with 24 trades totaling EGP111,398.
January 11th, 2013 by Tom Minney
Kenya is seeking to step up corporate governance in the capital market and guard against risks that threaten the financial system. The Capital Markets Authority (www.cma.or.ke) has announced today (11 January) that it has appointed a 9-member Capital Markets Corporate Governance Committee.
CMA Acting Chief Executive Paul Muthaura commented in a press release: “Since the issuance of the ‘Guidelines to Corporate Governance Practices by Listed Companies’ in 2002, there have been several developments nationally, regionally, and internationally precipitating the need for special attention to be paid to corporate governance to guard against risks that would threaten the financial system. Recent marketplace activities have pointed to the need to review the appropriateness of our regulatory regimes in light of the complexity of the challenges before us to ensure that we succeed in striking appropriate balances and manage costs of compliance.”
He said the committee should guide regular reviews of corporate governance standards for listed companies, in line with international best practice and trends; drive amendments to the corporate governance guidelines and regulations; identify legal and institutional strengthening requirements; address weaknesses in enforcement; and strengthen capacity building and professionalism of key stakeholders.
Ms Catherine Musakali, current chair of the Institute of Certified Public Secretaries of Kenya,will chair the committee and the members are: Ms Maryanne Macheru of the Registrar of Companies/Attorney General’s Office; Ms. Jackline Nyandege of the Ethics and Integrity Institute, nominated by the State Corporations Advisory Committee; Mr. Job Kihumba representing the Nairobi Securities Exchange; Rev. Geoffrey Njenga from the Centre for Corporate Governance; Mr. Mirie Mwangi from the University of Nairobi Business School; Mr. Mahmood Manji representing the CMA Board; Dr. Gituro Wainanina appointed as an independent member with experience on Corporate Governance from a regulatory perspective; and Mr James Mworia representing listed companies.
December 24th, 2012 by Tom Minney
Fortunes improved for investors in companies on the London Stock Exchange’s Alternative Investment Market (AIM) market, aimed at mid-capitalization or growth companies. Although the number of companies listed for trading on AIM has fallen every year since 2007, in 2012 the decline was only 4%, compared to a 16% decline in 2009 which was the fastest fall.
In addition, the reasons for companies leaving were mostly positive, according to a report on Reuters citing a report from Deloitte. Richard Thornhill, capital markets partner at Deloitte, is quoted as saying: “There are good reasons to be confident about the market in 2013.”
He said: “During the time of the financial crisis … the principal reasons why companies were leaving the list were negative. Either they no longer perceived that the market offered them value … or the economic climate forced them to de-list. The situation in 2012 has been very different, with the driving force behind companies leaving the list being transactions which have consistently realized value for shareholders.”
By the end of November 2012, 65 companies had been listed on AIM. Of these 44 had raised money and investors had seen an average gain of 26% since the listings. However, 113 companies had left AIM in the period, of which 41 were acquired, 17 were subject to reverse take-overs and 3 transferred to the LSE’s main market. Companies which were acquired received an average premium of 53% to the price at which the shares closed on the day before the acquisition, according to Reuters.
December 3rd, 2012 by Tom Minney
CAIRO – The short-term challenge for the Egyptian Government is to mobilize domestic and foreign investment to create 800,000 jobs. This was the energizing call from Hesham Kandil, the Prime Minister of Egypt, opening the 16th African Stock Exchanges Association conference in Cairo 2012 #ASEA2012 today (3 Dec). He also congratulated participants for braving the negative picture painted by the international media on Cairo’s largely peaceful mass demonstrations: “What you see in media is not necessarily what is happening in Cairo.” He repeated the previous speaker’s challenge, how to fuel the growth that keeps Africa rising not uprising.
Progress and plans in Egypt
Mr Kandil pointed out that Egypt is the gateway linking Africa with the Middle East, Europe and Asia. It is busy with a process of democratic change since 25 January last year. “We are making all efforts to fulfil the aspirations of the Egyptian people. In the past few days we have reached the historic point, the final draft of a Constitution written by an elected constituent assembly, under the first elected civilian president. This is a major step, with the prospect of a constitution on 15 Dec, followed by an election for a new Parliament, ending the transition period. You are witnessing history and you should be proud for being in Cairo at this time.”
He said that a democratic Egypt offers a great opportunity for investors where they can invest in a climate of transparency and accountability, those used to dealing with the old regime will soon notice the difference. He added that 2 weeks earlier, Egupt had reached a preliminary agreement with IMF on our home-grown national programme, this open the way to receive the necessary financing to fill the budget deficit that we have inherited from a previous regime. It is a certificate of confidence that this economy is in the right hand and going in the right direction.
He said Government had divided planning into 3 timetables, in the short term (2012-2014) we need to restore growth and we also plan in the mid term 2012-17 and long term 2017-2012. Our aim in the short term is to boost economic growth from 2.2% to 4.5% per annum in 2014, moving towards a sustainable growth rate of 7% by 2022. This year we intend to create local and foreign investment to create 800,000 jobs. The Egyptian Government offers an attractive business climate and offers solutions – lately we have been able to solve problems for 46 companies, bringing investment and jobs for 100,000 people.
The Government will support capital markets, small and medium enterprises SMEs and to achieve social justice for the people, this is the short–term plan to handle the structural problems of the state budget, when the deficit last year reached Le168bn. We will eradicate corruption, it will be a long road, only from this year 2012-13 we expect to save Le20bn from corruption only, we have to rationalize our expenses. We also have to rationalize subsidies to reach the poor, the current subsidy programme keeps the poor poor, we need to focus on the sectors that will help the poor by focusing on education and health services.
Egypt committed to African partners
We are also part of Africa, in Egypt we have a sincere commitment towards Africa, to cooperate with all African partners for our mutual growth and benefit. We strongly enhance our trade linkages and seek to be a major player in the African continent. I travelled east and south, north, everywhere, it is one continent that you cannot help to fall in love with, I have seen the potential and the opportunities with my own eyes. It is projected that Africa could achieve a high growth rate of 6%, African GDP is to reach $2.6trn by 2020, we have natural resources, energy, water and most importantly human capital, we have what we need to reach this. We meet to discuss how to integrate properly through supporting capital markets in Africa, work continuously on the improvement of the technological and legislative infrastructure, I also invite investors from all over the world to reconsider Africa land of opportunity. He pointed out that return on investment in Africa is very high and African companies are generally more profitable than Chinese companies.
December 3rd, 2012 by Tom Minney
CAIRO – Sunil Benimadhu, CEO of the Stock Exchange of Mauritius and re-elected President of the African Stock Exchanges Association (ASEA) told the opening session of the African stock exchanges that the capital markets should play a key role in investment flows to drive growth. This is a summary of his keynote address:
The world is changing: In a chart of the top 10 world economies in 2011 the US heads the world and many European countries are there. But the whole picture changes when you look at 2050, you see Nigeria and Egypt in the world’s top ten economies. Six out of the top ten countries by GDP growth from 2001-2010 are Africa and if you look at the projections from 2010-2015 7 of the top 10 are African. It is extremely clear that we are witnessing a change.
This conference is addressing the right issues: How can we attract more capital flows to Africa, how can we use stock exchanges to support this? The themes are:
• How do we get the message across to the largest companies in Africa to list on the African exchanges? Many big companies are going to raise capital in other markets when they should be raising it locally.
• How can we get our political leaders actively to support the development of capital markets? If you look at the history of other emerging markets you see that capital markets have played a very critical role in driving their development.
• It is also critical for us to engage with key institutions, including the African Development Bank, so the institutions can help take the capital markets to the next level.
• Africa is growing at 5-6%, but how do we go about doubling the GDP growth, how do we move from resource-based to more value-added growth, how do we move up the value chain?
• We need to keep improving the business climate, while implementing inclusive growth that propels the middle class to the forefront of economic activity, while embracing democratic principles.
“There is a very fine line between Africa rising and Africa uprising”. Africa is on the cusp of an economic revolution today, the next 10 years are going to be very different and to bring very different lives for the people. To tap this tremendous potential we need to keep working very hard, making the right decisions.
The conference website is here www.aseaegypt2012.org.