By Peter OBIORA investadvocate

Dec 06 2010 16.30 GMT

Lagos (INVESTADVOCATE) – The Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) Monday December 06 2010 in Lagos Nigeria flagged off its new trading time as Senator Ganiyu Solomon scheduled for the ceremony was conspicuously absent.

 

The NSE had affirmed in a Statement issued Friday December 03 2010 that Solomon, the Chairman Senate Committee on Capital Market would flag off the extension. However, no reason was given for his absence.

 

Emmanuel Ikazoboh, Interim Administrator of the NSE while reacting to this affirmed that other State or party issues might have engaged him.

 

“I don’t know why he was absent, I sent a reminder to him this morning and I did not get any no for an answer; so I assumed that he was going to be here. They are very busy people and it is possible other State matters; especially at this time when there are a lot of issues to be resolved either within parties or within the country’s economy are going on, he might have been called up rather suddenly” Ikazoboh said.

 

However, Oba Otudeko, and Goodie Ibru, two former Presidents of the NSE and a former Director-General (DG) Apostle Hayford Alile, were present at the event.

The trio at the flagging off ceremony of the new trading time affirmed that they came to support the new initiative at the Nigeria’s Exchange; which they referred to as a landmark event.

Meanwhile, some Dealing Members at the ceremony showed some dissent, this Ikazoboh reacted to by saying that any change will always be resisted by people; especially where these people are in their comfort zones and you want to move them out of it.

 

“But I can tell you that this was discussed extensively at the meeting we had with all the Broker Dealers on November 06 2010, it was also discussed at the Capital Market Committee (CMC) meeting in which all Capital Market Players and Operators were involved to agree on this time extension; probably some of them were not in these meetings or their Chief Executives Officers (CEOs) did not fully explain to them as to the reason behind the extension.

 

Ikazoboh affirmed that the reason for the extension is that the Nigeria’s Exchange is playing in a global Market and wish to have a platform whereby investors in other parts of the world can be accommodated.

 

“As to why we decided to extend, we are playing in a global market and we are trying to have a platform that investors can key in from any part of the world now. Therefore, if we close at 12.30, you are shutting out players or investors from the US Market. And so, the US Market we believe should be able to trade at least for one hour within our Market before we close the Market” he said.

 

The Interim Administrator further affirmed that what some of the Stockbrokers wanted as regards their dissent was for the NSE to extend the time to about 17.00 hours (5.00pm) to give enough time to the US investors to play in our Market.

 

“But we thought probably we do not have enough operations to warrant increasing it to that time. So this is just a test run, as things improve and the Market volumes increase, we would gradually be increasing our time” he affirmed.

 

Henceforth, trading structure on the Floor of the Nigeria’s Exchange is as follows from 9.30 am to 10.15 am, we have Market Pre-opening and from 10.15 am to 2.30 pm is open/continuous trading; making it a total of five trading hours.