Abuja - 16 public offers of 39 billion units, worth N980 billion was approved in 2007 by the Nigerian Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) according to its Director General, Malam Musa Al-Faki.

Making this known in a memo to employees of the commission in his new year message, Malam Al-Faki said the capital market recorded a robust performance. The DG said 11 other offers totaling 801 billion units of shares valued at N239 billion were rights issues in the primary market. Al-Faki said 51 applications were approved last year as against 49 in 2006.

The year 2007 also recorded six private placements of eight million units of shares valued at N2.6 billion and nine supplementary offers of 1.9 billion units of shares worth N2.4 billion representing a 250 per cent increase over the 33 billion shares turn over worthN427 billion achieved in 2006.

Mallam Al-Faki also pointed out that a new dimension to public issues was witnessed in 2007 with the introduction of the Global Depository Receipts (GDR). According to him, GDR allows Nigerian companies to be quoted in stock markets outside the country.”A total of seven GDRs were issued in the course of the year, out of these five were valued at $1.9 billion while two were worth $404.3 million. To further deepen the market, the SEC Director General said the commission would focus on stimulating activities in the bond market, particularly the corporate bonds. Other actions to further deepen the market and also aim at meeting government public housing programme, were the introduction of mortgage-backed securities (MBS) and Real Estate Investment Trust.

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