By Gbenga Agbana

Thursday, 25 Nov 2010

The London Stock Exchange has urged the regulators in the Nigerian financial industry to embrace more flexible regulations, to create a more vibrant market and enhance investor confidence.

LSE’s Head of Primary Markets for the Middle East and Africa, Mr. Ibukun Adebayo, who said this at a media parley on Wednesday, added that the Nigerian financial system regulators could adopt the code and principle based regulation, which had remained attractive to investors in the United Kingdom, to enhance the financial system. 

While admitting that the regulation of the financial market differed, in terms of country specifics, he said that the code and principle based regulation employed by the LSE might not be practicable in Nigeria for now due to some shortcomings in transparency. 

He, however, noted that the Nigerian local bourse would eventually metamorphose into the present stage of the LSE, in terms of flexible regulation in the financial market. 

Speaking on the role of the LSE in aiding the Nigerian corporate sector, as well as the capital market, Adebayo said LSE was interested in helping Nigerian companies by offering the world‘s largest pool of international capital and global profile to them. 

He said, ”We have seen in other emerging markets like India and China that international liquidity gives a boost to domestic liquidity and in that sense, we shall be a stakeholder in the continuing development of the Nigerian capital markets.” 

The representative of J.P Morgan Nigeria, a global financial services firm, Mr. Tosin Adewuyi, also said J.P Morgan was committed to the development and growth of Nigeria‘s capital market. 

”We have had presence in Nigeria since the 1960s and have been involved to date in some of the landmark capital raising transactions in Nigeria. We are promoting the Nigerian capital markets workshops as a forum to encourage a discussion on best practices and the development of the Nigerian capital market,” he said. 

 

Source: Punch