By InvestAdvocate

Lagos (INVESTADVOCATE)- GTI Securities Limited, owners of Nigeria’s first private trading floor said its awaiting approval by the first quarter (Q1) of 2016 to provide stockbrokers with direct trading access to the London Stock Exchange (LSE).

Aledare Amos, chief executive officer, GTI Securities disclosed this to InvestAdvocate at the launch of the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) ‘Trade Smart’ platform last week in Lagos Nigeria.

The company had in March 2014 disclosed it will provide its stockbrokers with direct trading access to the London Exchange as it’s already linked to the NSE and NASD OTC Plc for on-line, real time trading.

“In the next three months, we expect to have the final approval, as we speak right now, we have approval in principle as a matter of fact, few months ago, people were sent down from London Stock Exchange for inspection to come and inspect GTI trading floor and certified our processes which earned us the approval in principle. But the final approval may come in the first quarter of 2016,” Amos disclosed.

According to him, GTI is undergoing registration with the regulatory authorities in London and after the process is concluded, GTI will become a member of the London Exchange. “So, right from Nigeria we can be trading on London stocks and people over there can be trading on stocks in Nigeria. So, there would be cross-border transactions using the platform of GTI,” Amos affirmed.

He disclosed GTI was set up to achieve collaboration with various Exchanges all over the world, already the private trading floor is linked to the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) and NASD OTC Plc for on-line, real time trading.

“This is how we will keep going from one Exchange to another and the aim is that if you sit down in a GTI trading floor, you should be able to trade on multiple exchanges across the world. You should be able to trade on multiple asset classes, equities, NASD OTC stocks, fixed income etc. that’s the essence of it,’ he added.

“We set up GTI London in order to allow our investors have access to cross border transactions, we believe that we should continue to create value in GTI; not just trading values. In any market we have people that create value and others trade values. And what we have decided is that we want to continue to create value both locally and globally,” Amos said.

According to him, the firm intends to achieve this by operating like a mini- private equity firm were they would identify companies with good prospects, “we work with them, give them financial advisory, ensure proper financial restructuring and we groom them to a stage where they will become blue chips and so we are not limited to doing that alone in the country, we also want to do that outside and that is why we have gone ahead to establish GTI London,” he added.

Amos said the GTI private trading floor is already embedded with adequate risk management frameworks to mitigate risks that could come with global trading.