One of the major highlights for the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) in 2013 was the launch of the X-Gen. It is a new trading platform that was introduced in a bid to improve and deliver a first-rate technology platform. The system will also enable the NSE to host other exchanges across the region and acts as a great impetus for new market participants to enter the African capital market space.
The NSE was established in 1960 as the Lagos Stock Exchange and as of December 2013 had 200 listed companies with a market capitalization of around $80 billion.
The NSE closed the year with two new equity listings on the main board, while the bond market recorded 19 new listings with an uptick in the value of new issues.
The bourse also had a re-launch of its Alternative Securities Market (ASeM) for small and medium companies. It introduced a new market structure for trading equities and Fixed-Income Market Making.
“In 2014, the Exchange’s primary focus will be on growing the capital market in preparation for achieving emerging market status. The NSE will facilitate access to and participation in the market; increase our footprint on the continent and deploy a risk framework to safe-guard the market venue,” said Oscar Onyema, the CEO of the NSE, at the exchange’s yearly review for 2013 and outlook projections for 2014.
“Our goal is to get promoted to the emerging market index,” he added.
The NSE started operations in Lagos in 1961 with 19 securities listed for trading. Data on listed companies’ performances are published daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly and annually.
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The Floor Worth $80 Billion

It took the prestigious, New York City-based Columbia University two years to snag Wale Tinubu as keynote speaker at their annual Africa Economic Forum. Not surprising, Tinubu maintains an extremely busy schedule running Oando Plc, the first Nigerian company to list on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange as well as the Nigerian Stock Exchange, with a market capitalization of $1.4 billion and more than a thousand staff.
The forum, in its eleventh year, was held at the Ivy League school’s sprawling campus on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. It highlighted the rise of Africa and provided perspective from various industry titans from the continent. Tinubu, the group chief executive officer of Oando, the sub-Saharan African indigenous integrated energy group, joined Raila Odinga, the renowned politician and former prime minister of Kenya, Rosalind Kainyah, the managing director of Kina Advisory Limited and Emmanuel Nnadozie, the executive secretary of the African Capacity Building Foundation (ACBF) to discuss the continent’s economic rise.
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It has been more than two years since the African oil magnate featured on the cover of FORBES AFRICA. Back in November 2011, Tinubu ended his first interview with the magazine, saying &#8220;Africa is a challenging continent; you fight for water, you fight for food, you fight for shelter. We compete by nature, so it&#8217;s always difficult but we don&#8217;t always know it is difficult because we have a spirit of survival. Here at Oando, we deliver on the tough things.&#8221;
Fast-forward to 2014, it seems that Tinubu still has that philosophy.
Standing in the lofty hallways of the university, dressed in denim jeans, crisp white shirt, dark-colored suede blazer and his signature horn-rimmed glasses, one could have easily mistaken Tinubu for a professor; fashionably modern but unassuming even though he sits at the helm of a $1.7-billion energy conglomerate.
During the chat with FORBES AFRICA, Tinubu discusses his company’s acquisition of the Nigerian upstream oil and gas business of ConocoPhillips, an American multinational energy corporation, in a $1.7 billion transaction.
“We were looking to acquire a company that was three times our size. We had to do several rounds of fundraising, which we successfully did. We did a rights of issue first, then we did a private placement, and then we organized a corporate facility. We had about five or six work series running simultaneously in an environment where we were deemed not to be able to do the transaction because anybody wanting to do a $1.5 billion or $1.7 billion transaction in such a short space of time is unheard of. Finance is still a challenge; it’s always been a challenge in Africa.”
The London-trained attorney-turned oil baron is known for being innovative in identifying funding opportunities from across the globe as well as from different classes of institutions. In 2012, Oando’s upstream business, Oando Energy Resources, became the first Nigerian indigenous company to be listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange with a market capitalization of $184 million.
His company started off as a trading company in oil and gas. It then went into downstream marketing, where they filed registration and diversified into gas, built three different gas fire systems, 130 kilometers of pipelines went into the services industry and now they are finally in the upstream sector.
“Our ultimate goal was to diversify our business to the upstream — exploration and production of oil and gas — because there is a substantial amount of profitability that exists and there’s an incredible value that we can add towards our indigenous participation in our oil industry.”
Tinubu explains that Nigeria is producing around 2.3 million barrels of oil a month but should be producing 4 million barrels. He also says that 65% of the reserves are on land but most of the focus is offshore because of the better return it offers.
“It is not unrealistic for us to build a $10 billion exploration and production indigenous company. When we started 20 years ago, we had no money. Today, we are probably an enterprise of $3.5 to 4 billion and by the time we complete this acquisition we will be around $6 billion and that is with zero equity.”
This is the result of delivering on the tough things.

The Nigerian  Oil Baron  Buying Up America

In Aliko Dangote’s new book, Dangote’s Ten Commandements on Money: Lessons on How to Make Money from one of the World’s Richest Men, Nigeria’s richest man pays a visit to Kings College, Lagos. While there, signing autographs for a crowd of students, he notices a quiet 12-year-old student called Mike. In a manner reminiscent of Jesus selecting his disciples, Dangote reaches out to the boy and decides to mentor him. Young Mike spends the next four years combining school with keeping up with Dangote’s punishing cross-continental schedule, taking lectures from the billionaire, based on the ten commandments of the book.
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That tale, albeit pure fiction, is an attempt to illustrate something that lies at the core of Dangote’s personality: his strikingly unassuming and down-to-earth nature; as well as his commitment to bettering others.
Those privileged enough to meet Dangote like to trade stories of his self-effacing manner: the billionaire walking unaccompanied from his jet into Abuja Airport’s arrival hall or mingling at the exclusive Ikoyi Club in Lagos.
Dangote is something of a folk hero among the powerful of Nigeria. At a recent event in Lagos, a federal minister spoke in awe of the billionaire; describing Dangote as a man who, if woken in the middle of the night, would effortlessly reel off numbers pertaining to his numerous businesses. The lesson there—this is a man not too big for the boring details of his businesses.
For a man who runs such a large empire, there is no hint of a harried existence. Newspaper and internet images reflect a man with a shy smile, framed by a trimmed salt-and-pepper beard. More often than not, he is dressed in a suit; a rarity among Nigeria’s billionaire-entrepreneur class, who generally tend to favor national dress over the colonial look. He keeps his family life very private.
Dangote is a football lover, a long-time Arsenal supporter. In 2010, it was whispered that he was considering buying a stake in the London club, but Dangote denied this.
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It is tempting to believe that his acquisition, in 2010, of a $45 million Bombardier jet to celebrate his 53rd birthday was less an act of ostentation, more a desire to make his frequent long-haul flights more comfortable.
No doubt, beneath the calm, almost carefree, exterior is a restlessness that drives a relentlessly expansionary business instinct. He has, within the last few years, built the two largest cement plants in Nigeria and is at the moment on a continent-conquering factory construction spree.
Another interest is philanthropy; Dangote is often in the news for doling out sometimes mind-boggling sums of money to governments and charitable causes across Nigeria.
Between September and November 2011 he gave out more than N1 billion ($6.3 million). Six hundred million naira ($4 million) of this went, via the Dangote Foundation, to Nigeria’s north-central state of Kano for its Women Empowerment and Free School Feeding program. Another N500 million went to beneficiaries in at least five states drawn from across Nigeria. In 2011 the Dangote Group donated $6 million to Nigerian universities, as part of its corporate social responsibility initiative.
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He has a knack for building close, intensely beneficial relationships with governments, and the ruling party, yet generally stays away from frontline politics. His closeness to former Nigerian president Olusegun Obasanjo brought many benefits his way, including an honor. Dangote stirs up heated debate in Nigeria. To some, he is a cold-blooded capitalist and ruthless monopolist. To others, including most who work on the Nigerian Stock Exchange, he is the best thing ever to happen to the country’s economy. US diplomatic cables, released by Wikileaks, describe him as having “taken on the aura of an economic folk hero for some, villain for others.”
What everyone agrees on is how significant he is to the Nigerian economy. His cement company single-handedly accounts for a third of Nigeria’s stock market capitalization. Last September, Dangote’s name came up in a statement President Goodluck Jonathan made; one that would become famous.
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“Aliko Dangote told me that by December 2012, we would be exporting cement here. I am quoting him,” the president said, on national television.
Nigerians on social networking sites quickly adopted “Aliko Dangote told me…” as a catchphrase.
In reality Dangote is a man of few words and has little time for flamboyance but when he does speak, we would be foolish not to listen.

Tag: Nigerian Stock Exchange

FORBES AFRICA SOCIAL MEDIA

The Floor Worth $80 Billion

The Nigerian Oil Baron Buying Up America

The Economic Folk Hero Behind A Shy Smile