The Chief Executive Officer of the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE), Oscar Onyema on Tuesday said a bill that will allow the NSE to be publicly listed will be signed into law this year.
The NSE is second-biggest exchange in sub-Saharan Africa after Johannesburg and is believed to be a major entry point for investors in Africa.
Last year, the Nigerian bourse got a green light from its members, mostly stockbrokers and some institutional investors, to become a publicly listed company.
Onyema said he expects the public listing, a process known as demutualisation, to generate profits that will boost its business and product development capacity, particularly with regard to corporate governance matters affecting the Exchange.
The Johannesburg Stock Exchange, the continent’s most developed stock market, has been a listed company since 2006.
Onyema believes NSE is qualified for same through legislation.
Onyema told analysts as they discussed the 2018 market outlook: “In 2017, we amplified our efforts to establish West Africa’s first derivatives market.
“We also worked to create and enhance legal and regulatory frameworks which support derivative instruments, and have made significant progress towards securing approvals to operationalize these frameworks.”
The equities market in Nigeria was the third best-performing market in the world in 2017 after the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) liberalised the naira for foreign investors, a move which lured back funds that had been pulled out at the peak of a currency crisis when the naira crashed as low as N520 to a $1.
Onyema attributed last year’s performance partly to CBN policies that helped increase currency market liquidity, adding that he expected corporate earnings to lift equities this year, despite currency and political risks, after stocks crossed 44,000 points to hit a nine-year high on Tuesday.
Stocks gained 42 per cent last year and have continued to rally this year, rising 13 per cent in the first 11 days of trading.
Nigeria’s Exchange has more than 200 listed companies and plans to launch exchange-traded derivatives securities this year.
. Additional report from 
Reuters