BU$IN€SS Interview

From Abubakar Yunusa, Abuja

In the course of your presentation, you mentioned that the you will spare no efforts protecting investors, both minority and majority interest in companies that seem to be listed on the market. Could you just share with us from those efforts that we made to protect our interest?

Now, protection of investors is really the central mandate of the commission and when the commission protects investors, we do not discriminate between minority and majority shareholders. So when there is a case of de-listing, the application for de-listing comes to the commission and we go through it very carefully to ensure that the shares of the company being delisted are actually fairly valuable because fair valuation is what protects all investors, all the shareholders. So we ensure that this is really fairly valuable. If there are any issues, we actually take this application back to the issuing houses and get this sorted so that nobody that is in the company is actually treated unfairly. So, that is how the commission uses its regulatory power to ensure that both minority shareholders and majority shareholders are treated equally and fairly.

What is the update on unclaimed dividends?

Thank you very much for this question. I think we have answered the questions on unclaimed dividends severally. This is a figure that is dynamic, that is evolving. So at the moment, I will not give you a very specific figure, but I will let you know that there are arrangements that have actually been developed for managing the unclaimed dividends administration. You know that there is the unclaimed funds trust fund that has been established by government and unclaimed dividends are part of unclaimed funds that will be taken into this unclaimed fund trust fund, others are unclaimed deposits in bank, among others.

So there are efforts that are currently being made to ensure that this fund starts working. But the thing is that this fund is not taking over unclaimed dividends of people, if at any time anybody comes up with a claim for unclaimed dividends, the fund actually has been designed to pay that claim. But instead of allowing this fund to remain idle, this unclaimed fund trust fund is supposed to help in developing the country economically so that this will actually benefit both people who have this unclaimed dividend as well as other citizens who do not own them. Now I think these are the first two questions they are all on unclaimed dividends. If you want further details, we can actually engage with you to give you more specific details on these mechanisms that have been provided.

What is SEC doing on the crisis rocking Seplat currently?

We as a commission have issued a public statement on the engagements that we have had with both Seplat as a company and NGX, the exchange on which it is quoted and which is under our supervisory purview. And we have examined the issues surrounding Seplat, and we have come to the conclusion that these issues are not issues that really relate to the fundamental economic activity of Seplat as a corporate entity.

The production of Seplat has not been affected. Work at all Seplat facilities is continuing as it should, but there are issues surrounding some of the members of the board and some of the shareholders. And we have urged the board to pay attention to these issues, both the administrative issues