NIGERIA’S President Olusegun Obasanjo has mediated in a spat between the country’s two main bourses over which has the right to call itself the country’s leading exchange. Officials of Nigeria’s first bourse, established in Lagos in 1961, were suspended in May by the regulatory agency, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), over their refusal to call the bourse here the Lagos Stock Exchange. That was because the exchange had called itself the Nigerian Stock Exchange, raising objections from the new exchange in the new capital, Abuja, officially called the Abuja Stock Exchange. The Lagos Stock Exchange, that is the one in Lagos, whatever its name is, is by far the larger of the two exchanges and has leapt in the past two years. Obasanjo has urged the exchanges to settle their difference, and reassure investors. – AFP
Monday July 30, 2001