Shareholders, yesterday, lashed out at the Asset Management Company of Nigeria, AMCON, describing it as a misnomer in the history of the nation’s financial sector.
National Coordinator, Independent Shareholders Association of Nigeria, ISAN, Sir Sunny Nwosu, who made this disclosure in Ijebu Ode,Ogun State, at this year national workshop of the Capital Market Correspondents’ Association of Nigeria, CAMCAN, noted that AMCON had forced every bank in the country to cough out up to three per cent of their balance sheet for doing nothing.
According to him, “the intervention of AMCON is a rip off. Its capital base is N10 billion.So far, it has given out about N4 trillion (to buy off non-performing loans). Every bank was made to pay to the point of three per cent of their balance sheet for doing nothing. AMCON threatens all the banking institutions in the country.”
The shareholders’ boss equally accused the Director General of the Securities and Exchange Commission, SEC, Ms Arunma Oteh, as an outsider whose only success in the job so far is by taking the capital market backward.
“The person who took over from (Musa) Al-Faki (former SEC boss) has never been a player in the market as such. Her assumption in office has put the Nigerian Stock Exchange 20years behind. The failure or inability of the capital market regulators to manage the market crisis shows their shallow understanding of the market. They lack in-depth understanding of the market. Any capital market that is run by vested interest will not succeed,” he said.
He blamed the persistent low patronage of the market on policy somersaults and discouraging pronouncements of highly placed government officials and neglect of the plight of investors, particularly the minority shareholders.
“One thing is clear, shareholders are highly disillusioned. No company can exist without shareholders. It is not possible to have sustainable capital market growth when minority shareholders are treated with reckless abandon,” he said.
Minority shareholders have been treated unfairly since 2007 and 2009. Part of shareholders suffering is government inability to protect investors. Minority shareholders are very important and they must be protected. Failure to do so can make majority shareholders go to jail, just because of minority shareholders,” he added.
On what should be done to rejuvenate the market, Nwosu explained that his Association believed that the capital market would rebound if the regulators accept their mistakes and start all over again. He added: “The 5 per cent circuit breaker should be removed; the 50,000 units needed to effect a change in a particular stock should be removed. If all these are done, vibrancy will be restored in the market”.
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