By Christopher Nnanta InvestAdvocate
Lagos (INVESTADVOCATE)-The number of shareholders in the Nigerian Capital Market (NCM) that has embrassed the e-dividend payment system is set to hit 50 percent (50%).
A source at the Nigeria’s Central Securities Clearing System (CSCS) (name withheld) Thursday made this disclosure to www.investadvocateng.com in Lagos Nigeria.
“The number of investors that has embraced the e-dividend is between 48 to 50% and no longer 40% as reported earlier†the Source said.
It could be recalled that the e-dividend payment system was introduced by Nigeria’ Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC) in year 2008.
The e-dividend system would enable Shareholders whose accounts will be credited 24 hours after declaration of dividends, to get paid immediately through their Bank Accounts. This would enable the shareholders to be able to utilise their investments returns whenever they so wish.
However, the CSCS review for year 2011 and outlook for year 2012 is yet to be made public; but from the review of CSCS performance for year 2010 and made available to www.investadvocateng.com, the Nigeria’s Clearing House said that there over 4.5 million shareholders in the CSCS System going by statistics gathered at the end of 2010 in comparison to over 4.32 million shareholders recorded in year 2009.
According to the CSCS, this statistics clearly represents an increase of 4.2% in the number of shareholders who maintain accounts with Central Depository System.
40% of the reported current 4.5 million shareholders by the CSCS in its year 2010 review represent 1.8 million shareholders that have embraced the e-dividend system of payment.
With the 4.5 million registered Shareholders with the CSCS, the about 50% investors that has embraced the e-dividend option, it means that about 2.25 million shareholders are no e-dividend compliance.
However, in the review, CSCS affirmed that it dematerialised 886,124 share certificates for year 2010 compared to 2.0 million share certificates in year 2009 showing a decrease of 55.7% in dematerialisation of share certificates in the Nigeria’s Exchange.
The Nigeria’s Clearing House said from 1997 to year 2010, it has thus far dematerialised 13.4 million share certificates.
CSCS also said that it provided the platform for a full dematerialised Securities Market since 1997 and the infrastructure has since remained under-utilised.
Using the dematerialisation platform, the CSCS reported that as advised by the Registrars during the year 2010 review period, it processed corporate events as detailed below:
E-Bonus Shares, it processed 19.2 billion units of shares belonging to 2,108,544 investors.
E-Public Offer, it processed 0.7 billion units of shares for 400 investors and on the E-Rights 3.2 billion units belonging to 505 shareholders processed electronically.
Others are E-Placement where it processed for 33 investors 3.1 billion units of shares in terms of volume and on E-Merger the CSCS processed for 14,054 investors shares representing 15.3 billion units in year 2010 review period.