Yemisi Izuora
The Nigerian Stock Exchange has launched a new listing platform known as the Premium Board along with an associated Premium Board Index.
The initiative is part of its efforts at promoting Africa’s biggest firms and influencing economic growth and development of the Exchange and Nigeria’s economy.
The platform is designed to feature companies that meet the Exchange’s most stringent listing criteria of capitalisation, governance and liquidity.
It also aims at providing better platform for global visibility for eligible African corporates and enable them attract huge capital and reduce cost of funding.
The Premium Board Index, on its part, is an equity index designed to provide a benchmark to capture the performance of companies listed on the Premium Board and a basis for developing products (such as ETFs and equity index derivatives) that are tradable on the Exchange.
The companies that have qualified for the Premium Board are Dangote Cement Plc, FBN Holdings Plc, and Zenith International Bank Plc with market capitalisation of N2.87tn, N277.70bn and N587.43bn, respectively.