Three Stock Exchanges Agree To Integrate

West Africa’s three stock exchanges signed an agreement to integrate their markets and to introduce common listing and trading rules, the bourses said.

The stock exchanges of Ghana and Nigeria and the Bourse Regionale des Valeurs Mobilieres, which serves Benin, Burkina Faso, Guinea Bissua, La Coted’Ivoire, Mali, Niger, Senegal and Tog, commented today in a joint statement issued at a conference on African stock exchanges in the Nigerian capital, Abuja.

Under the agreement stockbrokers who meet “certain standards” will acquire a “common passport” that will qualify them to trade on any of the exchanges in the region, Ekow Afedzie, deputy managing director of the Ghana Stock Exchange, said.

Listing and trading rules will be harmonised and legislation will be changed where necessary to pave the way for the integration, Afedzie said. Bloomberg

Meanwhile, Nigeria will waive entry requirements in order to attract major oil and telecom companies operating in the country to trade their shares on the local bourse, ThisDay reported, citing Ndi Okereke-Onyuike, the director-general of the Nigerian Stock Exchange.

Oil companies including Royal Dutch Shell Plc, Exxon Mobil Corp., Chevron Corp., Total SA and Eni SpA and telecom operators such as MTN Group and Mobile Telecommunications Co. are still reluctant to trade on the local bourse, the Lagos-based newspaper said. Bloomberg/ThisDay