As the National Assembly concludes plans to pass a bill seeking to establish an unclaimed dividend trust fund, registrars of companies in the domestic economy have described the proposed bill as criminal in nature.They said the content of the bill, rather than being out to safeguard the return on investment of shareholders, was a grand design to enrich certain individuals in the country.The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) had recently said that about N19 billion was outstanding in the issue of unclaimed dividend, even as the commission was the major precursor of the bill which, if passed, would warehouse the unclaimed fund pending when shareholders would come for them.Another claim in the market had it that companies ensured that dividend did not get to their shareholders, but rather reinvested the money into the companies operation thereby short-changing investors in the stock market.Speaking on behalf of other registrars on the Bill at a forum on the Exchange last Wednesday, the Managing Director of First Registrar Securities, Mr. Bayo Olugbemi, said the Bill never addressed how shareholders would get their money or take care of their needs.According to him, those who drafted the Bill never had the shareholders in mind, rather, it was done with the aim of making some people getting rich.Olugbemi said eradicating the issue of unclaimed dividend completely was not by setting up Trust Fund, but by encouraging every investor to key into the e-dividend policy of the market regulators.Olugbemi said that less than five per cent of dividend declared over the past 10 years was outstanding contrary to report by the regulators.He said that with the growth attained in transaction in securities in the capital market, investors must embrace the electronic method of transacting business in the market so as to enable the market cut down in the issue of unclaimed dividend.He explained that 90 per cent of bulk of government bond was paid electronically, adding that cases of unclaimed dividend were hardly recorded in government bonds.He submitted that the problem of unclaimed dividend could not be tackled by government setting up Investment Trust, but by encouraging investors in the market to key into the electronic method of doing business in the market.He said the e-dividend transaction system had been enhanced currently as payment was done through Nigerian Interbank Money System into investors account to facilitate transactions.He lamented that despite the ongoing awareness to intimate shareholders on the need to embrace electronic transactions, demateria-lisation was about 30 per cent while those that had completely embraced e-dividend were less than 30 per cent.On the issue of non-acceptability of saving account for e-dividend warrant, the First Registrars boss said, If you have savings account and key into electronic payment dividend, our bank can receive your savings account. You go to the bank, tell them why you want to open the account, they will give you Know Your Customer document and you give them your references for record purposes.Enumerating the challenges registrars encounter in the process, Olugbemi said,the major challenge we had experienced was between 2005 and 2007 which involved the number of public offering that came at the same time and the number of investors that subscribed as at then, with SECs rule that all transfer must be completed within two weeks.The rule was put in place some 20 to 25 years ago, and as at 2007, it was not changed, and then there were fewer subscribers to attend to, but now you have close to one million shareholders or thereabouts, and you still have two weeks to finish transactions, and that actually put a lot of challenges on registrars.
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