THE Securities and Exchange Commission, SEC, is set to penalize capital market operators, CMOs, that fail to file its fidelity bond to the Commission.

THE Nigerian Stock Exchange, NSE has announced the introduction of Investor Relations (IR) Data Pack, an innovative and dynamic webpage integrated with key market data, corporate news and disclosures, for corporate issuers.

FOLLOWING the   persistent  bearish run in the equities market in recent times, investors may begin bargain hunting of equities, especially with some of those companies expected to release positive first half, HI’19, earnings.

LAGOS—A chieftain of the All Progressives Congress, APC, Lagos chapter, Jide Oni, has described the ministerial nomination of former Lagos State Governor and immediate past Minister of Works, Power and Housing, Babatunde Fashola, and the Managing Director of Nigeria Inland Waterways Authority, NIWA,  Senator Olorunnimbe Mamora, as well deserved.

BENIN CITY—AS the controversies surrounding the June 17th night inauguration of the Edo state House of continues, a coalition of civil society group under the name Concerned Civil Society Groups, Edo State Chapter yesterday expressed displeasure over the way and manner the house was inaugurated and the crisis it has caused in the state.

THE scarcity of funds that caused cost of funds to rise by over 1000 basis points in the interbank money market last is expected to abate this week due to inflow of N632 billion from matured treasury bills and statutory allocation to states and local governments.

A Non-Governmental Organisation, Envision Global Care Foundation, has commissioned its newly-built Ante-Natal Care, ANC, section of the Lugbe Primary Health Care Centre in Abuja, designed to promote maternal, newborn and child health, MNCH.

The author told the story of how the late former president, Alhaji Shehu Shagari, chose the late Dr. Alex Ekwueme as Vice President – a nomination that made many party members angry, especially the late Dr. K.O Mbadiwe who had hoped to clinch it. The creativity with which the media captured the nomination and the indignation in a headline was amazing: “Shagari Picks Ekwueme but KO is not Ok.” Today, let’s see how the same Dr. Alex Ekwueme as VP helped to create more states for Nigeria:

The Asset Management Corporation of Nigeria, AMCON, which acquired about 13,800 non-performing loans from banks in 2010 eventually had N5trillion debt to recover from the debtors nationwide. Some notorious deadbeats are indebted to more than one bank. The N5 trillion involved is more than double the loans the Federal Government will be incurring this year to support the 2019 budget.

NIGERIA is a country some talk about in the past tense. Like the famous author, Chinua Achebe titled his last book on Nigeria: There Was A Country.

AS the frenzy over the delay, the rigmarole and the eventual assent to the African Continental Free Trade Agreement, AfCTA, dies down, we draw attention to the task ahead given its implications to Nigeria’s economy.

Managing Director, MD, Investment Banking at the United Capital Plc, Babatunde Obaniyi, in this interview speaks on fund raising from Nigerian capital market to finance infrastructure deficits, mergers and acquisitions to meet capital requirements of corporate entities, apathy for equities, need for diversification to fixed income instruments, power sector challenges, among other issues. Excerpts:

A FEW days ago, President Muhammadu Buhari forwarded names of 43 ministerial nominees to the Senate for confirmation. Among the 43 nominees are 12 persons who were ministers in the president’s first term in office, while the remaining 31 nominees, when cleared by the upper legislative house, would become ministers for the first time under the current political dispensation. For many years, what has been the usual practice in the country is for the president to forward a list of ministerial nominees to the Senate for screening without their corresponding portfolios.

THE discourse, this week, relates to the implications of the CBN Governor’s plan for banks “to increase their capital base above the present N25bn”, which incidentally, was equivalent, to $195m (N127-N130=$1) in 2004, but has become seriously eroded to barely $75m today! Notwithstanding, CBN Governor, Godwin Emefiele did not reveal how the inexplicably, battered Naira Exchange Rate, which is actually, the prime cause of the sliding value of the capital base of Nigerian banks will be rescued.

ABUJA—The Oil & Solid Mineral Producing Area Landlords’ Association of Nigeria, OMPALAN, an elite NGO inaugurated its ‘Committee for Harmonization of relations between Herders and Farmers’ called  CHREBHAF.