THE Securities and Exchange Commission (Sec), last week had declared the beginning of a new regime of zero tolerance to share price manipulation, insider dealings and other sharp practices bedevilling the nation’s capital market over the years.
The Director General of Sec, Ms Arunma Oteh, made this declaration in Abuja. She also said that the commission would strengthen its regulatory oversight, intensify monitoring activities and collaborate with other regulatory agencies in the financial sector to ensure the restoration of investor confidence in the capital market.
Speaking at her maiden interaction and 2010 budget defence session with the House of Representatives Committee on Capital Market, Oteh assured that henceforth, Sec will ensure that “inappropriate behaviours” of capital market operators did not go unpunished.
Honourable Ahmed Wadada, the chairman House Committee on capital market, had earlier tasked Sec to tackle decisively, some of the problems confronting the capital market. Wadada said though the task of resuscitating the market was a collective responsibility shared by the parliament and the various stakeholders, the real challenge of driving the needed change is with the commission. He said that the new team in Sec must endeavour to tackle the pending issues of the status of the Nigeria Stock Exchange (NSE), corporate governance and the integration of the informal sector into the market.
She acknowledged all the challenges and assured that these issues will be resolved in the interest of deepening and broadening   the capital market. “We feel responsible for making sure that we lay the foundation for the capital market of the future that will drive the economy of our country. We believe that this is even more important at this time of global economic meltdown and the peculiarities of our own market given some of the sharp practices that have led the average investor to incur significant losses most of the time, all of their life savings.
“We therefore expect that one of the things that we would focus on predominantly in 2010 is to continue to enhance regulatory oversight through ensuring that all the capital market operators, all the public companies abide by international best practices in terms of corporate governance, transparency and collaborating with them to implement the International Financial Reporting Standard.