LAGOS, JANUARY 8, 2017 – FMDQ OTC Securities Exchange on Thursday recorded another milestone with the quotation of N8.45billion, N4.22billion and N22.33billion Access Bank of Nigeria Plc Commercial Papers on its platform.
The News Agency of Nigeria reports that this CPs represents series 1, series 2 and series 3 under the bank’s N100 billion commercial paper issuance programme.
Commercial paper is an unsecured, short-term debt instrument issued by a corporation, typically for the financing of accounts receivable, inventories and meeting short-term liabilities.
Maturities on commercial paper rarely range longer than 270 days.
Speaking during the event in Lagos, Dr. Herbert Wigwe, Group Managing Director of Access Bank Plc said that the CPs would boost the bank’s liquidity level and ensure enhanced dividend to all stakeholders.
Wigwe said that liquidity was important and “the life wire of banking” noting that the bank would continue to maintain the best liquidity ratios in the industry.
He explained that the coming on board of Access Bank on the company’s platform would increase FMDQ activities.
Wigwe said: “The coming of Access Bank will help to attract the interest of some international banks in FMDQ, especially those that have Nigerian parents.”
Wigwe, who commended the company for providing the needed liquidity to companies, said that the bank would continue to top activities on the platform.
Bola Onadele, the Managing Director FMDQ, said that the CP was the company’s first quotation for the year.
Onadele said that FMDQ would remain committed to the development of the country’s debt market to ensure sustainability.
He also said that one of FMDQ’s major focuses in 2017 would be to drive interest rate derivatives having launched the OTC foreign exchange market feature in 2016.
Onadele also said that the company would ensure that cost of listings was reduced considerably to boost activities.
He said: “We want to unlock all the possibilities to ensure that private and public companies access the debt market.”
He said that FMDQ would continue to articulate, with the efforts of its key stakeholders, ways to improve and make the Nigerian markets globally competitive, liquid and credible.
For his part, Abubakar Jimoh, the Managing Director, Coronation Merchant Bank,
one of the issuing houses of the CPs, commended Access Bank for giving them the opportunity to package the issue.
Jimoh said that Coronation Merchant Bank, a new entrant to the capital market, was encouraged to help others to access the market.
He noted that the merchant bank would likely be the first to access FMDQ private company bond initiative in the future.
FMDQ platform inaugurated on November 7, 2013, was licensed by the Securities and Exchange Commission in 2012 to provide oversight in the OTC market in Nigeria.
It is a securities exchange for listing and trading of fixed income products such as treasury bill, bond and foreign exchange, among others.
