By Monday, 5 Jul 2010

The Nigerian Stock Exchange has removed Union Bank of Nigeria Plc and Ecobank Nigeria Plc from the NSE Banking -10 Index.

 

The index committee, after reviewing the banking index in its quarterly meeting, replaced the two banks with Fidelity Bank Plc and Skye Bank Plc.

 

The committee also reviewed the NSE-30 and other sectoral indices, such as the NSE Food, Beverages and Tobacco-10 Index, the NSE Insurance-10 Index and the NSE Oil and Gas-5 Index.

 

Two companies were also removed from the NSE-30. The companies– Cadbury Nigeria Plc and Ecobank Nigeria Plc–were replaced by Julius Berger Plc and Mobil Oil Nigeria Plc.

 

The NSE 30 is a price index that measures the returns on investment from the change in market value of the stocks in terms of capital appreciation and depreciation only.

 

It includes the top 30 companies in terms of market capitalisation and liquidity, and is weighted by adjusted market capitalisation.

 

The NSE had introduced the five indices as tradable indices early in 2009.This, according to the Director-General of the NSE, Prof. Ndi Okereke-Onyiuke, was to help deepen the Nigerian capital market.

 

She had said, ”Work continued in the effort to deepen the Nigerian capital market by creating new products. Some of the new products considered by the NSE include: exchange traded funds, mortgage-backed securities and asset-backed securities.

 

”As part of efforts to expand the product range, we have created five new tradeable indices, which will be based on various criteria, including liquidity, and will form the platform for the introduction of new products.”

 

She added that the tradable indices were expected to create room for a broader diversification of financial products available on the secondary market, and would enable financial derivatives that required special tradable indices for monitoring their market value to be introduced into the normal secondary market of the NSE.

 

The Strategy/Derivatives Department, in conjunction with the Research and Information Technology Department of the NSE, were responsible for the design of the NSE 30 Index.

(Source:Punch)