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SEC moves to ensure compliance with Corporate Governance Code

By on November 12, 2015

The Securities and Exchange Commission is intensifying efforts to collaborate with other regulators to ensure good corporate in the nation’s capital market.
Speaking in Abuja when  the executives of the Institute of Chartered Secretaries and Administrators of Nigeria (ICSAN) visited him, the Director General of  SEC,  Mounir Gwarzo, said the commission is ready  to work with the body to promote corporate governance in Nigeria, noted ICSAN has a major role to play in safeguarding the rights of shareholders.

He said: “We have very onerous responsibilities to enforce the  corporate governance and in doing this, collaboration is very important. When you look at the market, our scope is wide, apart from the quoted companies you are also looking at about 800 or 1000 operators. When we finish with the quoted companies we also want to extend the code and the compliance to all registered operators. What we started some few years ago was to say that any operator that is to be registered in the  market must have a compliance officer  however excellent the sponsored individual has done, once your compliance officer has not met our minimum requirement that fund will not be registered and the compliance officer has a lot of responsibilities apart from the normal requirements in terms of returns to other regulatory institutions it is also to ensure that the right  corporate governance practice is being implemented.”

According to him, a new corporate governance code for the capital market would soon be launched by the commission.

“We don’t want to launch this code and there would be difficulties and so we need to put deliverables in place. One of the things that we have done is training and so far over 70 per cent of quoted companies have attended that training,” he said.

Gwarzo  disclosed that SEC  will embark on enlightenment campaign to ensure the issue of good corporate governance  is taken to the next level.

In speech, ICSAN President, Mr. Nat Ofo expressed the readiness of the institute to partner  the commission.

He said:  “The essence of this visit is to smoothen the relationship between SEC and ICSAN. We felt that it is better to have this discussion and review the things that we can do together. This will enable us draw out the areas we can work together particularly in the area of corporate governance. ICSAN is the custodian of corporate governance and SEC as far as we are concerned is the owner of corporate governance in Nigeria and we will partner with SEC to deliver that.”

He also informed Gwarzo that the institute can assist in the commission in carrying out what he described as a corporate governance audit on any new company that intends to list on the floor of the stock exchange.

 

[ThisDay]