Bourse to buy Nasdaq monitoring system after stocks plunge

January 28, 2016 7:06 AM

"This development affirms our continuous commitment to protecting investors by creating a fair and orderly market," the Nigerian Stock Exchange's head of regulation, Tinuade Awe, said in a statement on Wednesday.

A security officer checks a man outside the Nigerian Stock Exchange in a file photo. REUTERS/Akintunde Akinleye

Nigeria's bourse plans to buy a price monitoring system from Nasdaq to protect against market manipulation, the stock exchange said on Wednesday, after stocks shed 17 percent in the first eighteen days of 2016.

Nigeria's financial authorities last made substantial reforms to the stock market after a crash in 2008 stoked worries about inadequate oversight and brought allegations of financial mismanagement including insider trading.

"This development affirms our continuous commitment to protecting investors by creating a fair and orderly market," the Nigerian Stock Exchange's head of regulation, Tinuade Awe, said in a statement on Wednesday.

In the five years after the 2008 crash, the stock exchange switched to a quote-driven from a price-driven market using the Nasdaq X-Stream trading platform and extended the trading day so that it overlapped with Wall Street's opening, in a bid to increase participation from U.S. and other foreign investors.

In 2011, the bourse also appointed a former American Stock Exchange senior vice president, Oscar Onyema, as its chief executive officer.

Despite the changes, Nigeria's benchmark index has fallen more than 30 percent in the past year as a currency crisis caused by a plunge in the price of oil, the country's main export, hit Nigerian assets across the board.

The second heaviest-weighted on the MSCI frontier market index after Kuwait, it fell 2.1 percent on Wednesday.