SEC's cleaning exercise leads to cancellation of 84 inactive market operators

By Dansu Peter 

The cleaning up exercise of the records of registered market operators, embarked upon by the Security and Exchange Commission, SEC, under the present leadership of its acting Director-General, Ms Mary Uduk, has led to the cancellation of registration of eighty four (84) inactive 

operators as well as giving 94 others a pre-notice of cancellation of their registration.

Similarly, the SEC has revealed that with 

over 70% of its ten year plan (2015-2025) initiatives  already started, the plan has the potential to facilitate the implementation of the Nation’s economic agenda. 

These were revealed in a document obtained on Thursday in Abuja detailing the various strides of SEC under Ms Uduk.

The document explained that the SEC is guided by a ten-year (2015 to 2025) Capital Market Master Plan which is a collective vision for the capital market and the role it should play in positioning the capital market for an accelerated development of the national economy.  

The Plan, according to the document,  was built around the four strategic themes of driving and facilitating capital raising for sustainable national development and transformation of Nigeria’s priority economic sectors, thereby effectively contributing to the national economy and aligning market structure to requirements of the economy as well as increase scale, size and professionalism of all stakeholders.

The plan also aims at  ensuring competitiveness by establishing practices to improve transparency, efficiency and liquidity and to attract sustainable interest in the capital market from domestic as well as foreign investors and participants as well as creating an enabling and facilitative oversight and regulatory framework supportive of the deepening and development of the Nigerian capital market.

According to the document, "Following rigorous verification by accounting firms, the Commission was able to release the list of compliant operators. It also began cleaning up the records of registered market operators, especially by giving 94 inactive CMOs pre-notice of cancellation of their registration while registration of 84 of them was cancelled"

The document explained further that in order to achieve the Master Plan initiatives, certain laws needed to be reviewed, adding, "therefore, a conference was held in conjunction with the National Assembly to look at the legal challenges facing the Nigerian capital market. 

"This culminated in the setting up of three (3) law review committees to review relevant laws such as the Investments and Securities Act (ISA), Companies and Allied Matters Act (CAMA), Trustee Investment Act, Warehouse Receipt Bill etc. 

"The interim reports of the committees were exposed to the market for comments. The resulting documents formed the capital market consensus on the status of the review of the laws".

Continuing, the document said, "In order to strengthen the collaboration and integration of Capital Markets across the region, SEC Nigeria along with SEC Ghana and Conseil Régional de L'Epargne Publique et des Marchés Financiers (CREPMF) continued to promote integration through the West African Securities Regulators Association (WASRA).

The SEC, the document further revealed, was actively involved in the formulation of various rules and spearheaded several initiatives which helped provide regulatory structure and due diligence for capital market transactions, such as fixed income and equities, and the entire Capital Market as a whole, formulation of various rules and regulations for the registration of Capital Market Operators.

The Commission, under was also instrumental in the formulation and implementation of several rules on Mergers, Acquisitions and Takeovers.

Ms Uduk, since steering the affairs of SEC as Acting Director-General, has led the Commission on a number of strategic initiatives including:

Development of the Roadmap for a vibrant Commodities Trading Ecosystem, and ongoing implementation of same;

Collaboration with the Nigerian Educational Research and Development Council (NERDC) on the infusion of capital market studies into the curriculum of basic and senior secondary schools, the document revealed.

SEC has similarly been engaged in the formulation of rules on Green Bonds to promote issuance of debt instruments for financing of projects with positive environmental impact.