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Barclays Africa wants to tap Nigerian stock market opportunities
Barclays Africa says it is ready to explore opportunities in the Nigerian stock and some other African markets.
Barclays Africa, formerly ABSA Group, a South African financial services provider, said it has seen some flows into Nigeria in the first quarter of 2018, though most investors had opted to wait as they searched for higher yields.
Garth Klintworth, head of markets for Barclays Africa Group, told Reuters on Thursday, May 31, 2018, that its subsidiary Absa Nigeria had acquired a securities licence in Nigeria, part of a wider plan to increase its presence in West Africa’s biggest economy.
“We have acquired a securities licence, stock broking licence and we have already employed people to bring those licences to effect,” Klintworth told Reuters on the sidelines of a conference in the commercial capital, Lagos.
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Klintworth said Absa would start to trade on the Nigerian stock market from July and was also looking at other markets.
“We are investigating what opportunities there are in Ivory Coast, Morocco and possibly Angola,” he said.
Nigeria’s stock exchange, the third largest in Africa, was named among the best performing stock in the world in 2017 and gained strength in January after rising 43% last year.
Currently, some profit taking has depressed the market shedding N908 billion about 6% in last week's trading as the All-Share Index and market capitalisation closed the week at 36,816.29 and N13.336 trillion, respectively.
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