CardinalStone Securities, one of the leading stockbroking firms in the country, dominated trade on the Nigerian Exchange Group (NGX) in the first nine months of the year as it traded N359.89 billion worth of equities, amounting to 13.2 percent of the total transactions on the NGX.
APT Securities and Funds continued the strong performance its recorded last year by trading N205.89 billion worth of stocks, representing 7.55 percent of the nine-month transactions on the NGX this year. Stanbic IBTC Stockbrokers executed N187.24 billion worth of shares on NGX which amounted to 6.87 percent of the total trade. Stanbic IBTC Stockbrokers is within the Stanbic IBTC Holdings Group, and enjoys strong patronage from foreign investors.
Meristem Stockbrokers continues to enjoy acceptance from investors as it traded N146.43 billion worth of transactions in the first nine months of this year, representing 5.37 percent of the total activity on NGX.
United Capital Securities followed in terms of patronage with a trade of N138.16 billion which translated to 5.07 percent of the total trade. The five top stockbroking firms executed 38.06 percent of the total trade in the first nine months of 2023.
FBN Quest Securities executed 4.20 percent of transactions which translated to N114.47 billion worth of trade. EFG Hermes traded N110.34 billion worth of trade which amounted to 4.05 percent of the trade. Cordros Securities executed N101.89 billion worth of trade or 3.74 percent of the total trade.
APEL Asset and Regency Assets Management traded 2.48 percent and 2.40 percent of the total transactions from January to September, representing N67.48 billion and N65.42 billion of the total transactions on NGX.
Consequently, the total trade executed by the top ten stockbroking firms summed up to N1.497 billion, which represented 54.94 percent of the NGX transactions from January to September 2023, that is, when measured by value.
The ranking is different when the top investment houses are rated by the volume of trade executed during the same period. United Capital Securities led the chart as it traded 29.27 billion shares during the same period, representing 13.36 percent of the total shares traded by investors. CardinalStone Securities traded 9.66 percent of the total shares traded by investors, amounting to 21.16 billion shares.
One of the largest transactions of the year was the acquisition of shares in First Bank, a member of the FBN Holdings by Oba Otudeko, to become the largest shareholders of the Nigerian oldest financial institution.
In July 2023, through Barbican Capital Limited, billionaire investor, Oba Otudeko, acquired 4,770,269,843 units of shares from the First Bank’s issued share capital of 35,895,292,791, which put the stake of Barbican Capital Limited in the company at 13.3%.
APEL Asset traded 15.63 billion shares while Morgan Capital and APT Securities traded 11.47 billion shares and 10.48 billion shares during the period. Meristem Securities executed 7.57 billion shares; Stanbic IBTC traded 6.14 billion shares; Regency Assets traded 5.25 billion shares; EFG Hermes traded 4.75 billion shares while FBN Quest Securities traded 4.63 billion shares in the first nine months of this year.
Altogether, the top ten stockbroking firms traded 116.34 billion shares representing 53.12 percent of the total shares traded during the period.
