FBN Capital seeks collaboration, collective ownership towards building African Stock Exchanges

“Capital market and financial sector development is an important facilitator of economic growth in sub-Saharan Africa. It should be recognized as a legitimate component of a country’s development program and should receive the support of government departments and agencies through allocations of their staff and financial resources”, said Temitope Adeosun.

These were the remarks of Temitope Adeosun, Head, Equity Brokerage at FBN Capital, an FBN Holdings company, while speaking about the recently concluded 5^th edition of the ‘Building African Financial Markets (BAFM) Capacity Building Seminar’, hosted by the Nigerian Stock Exchange in partnership with the African Securities Exchanges Association (ASEA) in Lagos.

The seminar was focused on addressing liquidity concern in African Capital markets and the evolution of local regulation, which is starting to increasingly provide the opportunity for pension funds to diversify their expanding portfolios beyond equity investments in traditional sectors. Innovation, optimal market structure and technology were major highlights identified to address low liquidity in African Capital markets.

According to Adeosun, supporting knowledge and capacity building initiatives which will empower and remove impediments that impact the ability of African exchanges to handle sizeable capital inflows is the collective responsibility of all players in the industry.

“As part of the largest financial services group in Africa, we believe that innovative solutions are required, especially in this era of ‘technology-on-the-go’. As technology can be a powerful tool for the congregation of diverse markets, the encouragement of this growth by market participants would be critical to success.”

Speakers at the event included the CEO of Nairobi Securities Exchange, Mr. Geoffrey O. Odundo; Executive Director, Johannesburg Stock Exchange, Dr. Leila Fourie; Head, Market Structure Strategy, Middle East and Africa, Bloomberg, Ms. Selloua Chakri among others, and the presentations clearly addressed the need for concerted contributions to the advancement of the African financial markets.

The BAFM seminar is a capacity building initiative championed by ASEA in collaboration with its members, and is designed to promote growth in African financial markets. This is first time the BAFM has been hosted in Nigeria, and the event was supported by FBNQuest amongst others.