As The Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) gears up its effort of ingraining Corporate Integrity into the fabric of its listed companies through the establishment of a Corporate Governance Rating System, the Exchange together with the Convention on Business Integrity (CBi) will be hosting a Breakfast Session on January 29, 2014 at the Stock Exchange building in Marina, Lagos.
The programme will bring together senior executives from listed companies across various industry sectors in Nigeria to further discuss Corporate Governance as one of the critical fundamentals for ensuring a healthy investment environment and maximizing investor returns for sustainable growth of the nation’s capital market.
According to Mr. Haruna Jalo-Waziri, the Executive Director of Business Development at The NSE, “The Exchange has been pursuing a program that is really geared around sustainability as we want to encourage companies to do business in a sustainable manner. The partnership with the CBi is to create a corporate governance rating system and based on that system, a ranking will be created and an index introduced for companies that meet certain thresholds within that ranking”.
“The objectives are to raise overall corporate governance standards in the country, by providing companies with an incentive to develop global best practices. It will provide opportunities for companies to differentiate themselves in the market place” added Jalo-Waziri.
Speaking on the initiative, the Executive Director of CBi Mr Soji Apampa mentioned that according to a recent IFC report, good corporate governance ultimately increases a company’s access to capital. “The NSE and CBi plan to launch the CGRS in 2014 and as part of the process of implementing the initiative, we have invited companies to join us at a detailed briefing session on the CGRS. This session will provide information on the methodology, implementation, overall strategy and benefits of the system” revealed Apampa.
It is important to note that the ratings and subsequent rankings will feed into two other important projects of the Exchange: The NSE intends to launch a Premium Board which will be comprised of companies that adhere to the highest corporate governance standards based on the ratings from the CGRS; the Exchange also intends to use the ratings to develop a tradable Corporate Governance Index.