Shareholders bemoan disposition of market regulators to investors

SHAREHOLDERS said the non-challant attitude of capital market regulators toward investors is a major cause of their dismal confidence in the market. The shareholders spoke with the News Agency of Nigeria, on Monday, in Lagos.They claimed that the Federal Government, the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) had not done enough to encourage domestic portfolio investment since the market nearly collapsed in 2008.NAN also quotes them as saying that most of them were aggrieved that the regulators abandoned them, in spite of boosting the nation's economy through domestic investments in the capital market and government bonds.The President of the Progressive Shareholders Association of Nigeria (PSAN), Boniface Okezie urged the NSE, SEC and the Ministry of Finance to woo the investors back to the market since it had survived beyond the holocaust days.''He said thatthe current reforms being undertaken by the regulators could not restore lost confidence in the nation's capital market, but a coordinated enlightenment and people-friendly economic policies.'The market we are seeing today on a rally point happened on its own and not because of a specific reform by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) or the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE),'' he said.Okezie said that it was necessary for Nigerians to find out whether the government's appointees had made any effort to embrace and woo the investors, who left, back. 'They need to talk to these investors and explain to them the reason why the market is functioning the way it is,' he added. According to him, there is also the need for the regulators to address the issues that led to the loss.The PSAN president said that asking multinationals to enlist on the market was not the way to go as it was still on a downward trend with no guarantee of a steady appreciation.
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