By Peter OBIORA InvestAdvocate
Lagos (INVESTADVOCATE)- Newly rebranded and foremost registrar in Nigeria, First Registrars & Investor Services Ltd has returned in excess of about N8.0 billion in unclaimed, Bayo Olugbemi, managing director (MD) of the company disclosed on Tuesday at the unveiling of its new corporate identity.
Olugbemi says his company acted in compliance to a directive by Nigeria’s Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that Registrars return unclaimed dividends of over 15 months in their custody.
“There was a directive from SEC that unclaimed dividends of 15 months and above should be returned to the issuing companies. We have done it, in fact before now a lot of our companies actually take back unclaimed dividend after 15 months, just a few. We returned excess of about N8.0 billion,” he affirmed.
On June 1, 2015 SEC directed all Registrars of public companies to return all unclaimed dividends, which have been in their custody for fifteen (15) months and above, to the paying companies.
The Commission also stated that Registrars are required to file evidence of remittance not later than June 30, 2015.
It also warned that ‘failure to comply’ with the directive shall attract appropriate sanctions without further recourse.
SEC has recently put unclaimed dividends at over N70 billion, this is a recurring issue in the Nigerian Capital Market (NCM). SEC official data had said unclaimed dividends increased sharply from about N27.8 billion in 2008 to N41.3 billion in 2009, to N41.7 billion in 2010. In 2011 it hit N50.2 but slightly increased further to N50.7 billion as at September 2012.
Olugbemi at the unveiling of the new corporate identity said the company seeks to expand into other areas of business in the capital market; which include asset and fund management, data management, information provision and verification.
“What has changed is that we are refocusing our business, before now, we are a mono-product kind of business, we only do share registration. We will be refocused because of the new dynamics in the industry,” he affirmed.
He disclosed that before the divestment, First Registrar had planned to do other things; but were restricted because of the fact that they have other registered company within the First Bank Group that were doing similar businesses.
“Let me tell you some years ago, we went to Ghana, we incorporated two companies there, First Registrars and First Securities and that was to go into stockbroking and other things there. But for some reasons, we were unable to move ahead, but now that we are on our own, we can do other things provided they are contained on our Article of Association,” the CEO at the newly rebranded Registrar added.
“We are not just Registrars, we want to be different, and we want to do other things. The biggest Registrar Company in the world today is Computershare of South Africa. But it actually started from Europe, today they have taken over almost everybody’s shares in the world, they have taken over Europe, Asia; but they do more than share registration,” he affirmed.
Olugbemi says Computershare were IT providers before venturing into share registration, but today, they are into pension fund management, asset management. So, we want to become something similar to that, to do much more than share registration,’ the First Registrar CEO said.
