CardinalStone Securities, one of the leading stockbroking firms in the country, dominated trade on the Nigerian Exchange Group (NGX) in the first ten months of the year as it traded N386.59 billion worth of equities, amounting to 13.1 percent of the total transactions on the NGX.
APT Securities and Funds continued the strong performance it recorded last year by trading N222.17 billion worth of stocks, representing 7.54 percent of the nine-month transactions on the NGX this year. Stanbic IBTC Stockbrokers executed N213.01 billion worth of shares on NGX which amounted to 7.23 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 N154.1 billion worth of transactions in the first nine months of this year, representing 5.23 percent of the total activity on NGX.
United Capital Securities followed in terms of patronage with a trade of N141.79 billion which translated to 4.81 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.
EFG Hermes traded N120.68 billion worth of trade which amounted to 4.09 percent of the trade. FBN Quest Securities executed 4.04 percent of transactions which translated to N119.18 billion worth of trade.
Another vibrant investment house, Cordros Securities executed N111.45 billion worth of trade or 3.78 percent of the total trade. Morgan Capital traded N70.88 billion worth of equities, translating to 2.40 percent of the total transactions during the period.
APEL Asset traded 2.38 percent of the total transactions from January to October, worth N70.09 billion on the NGX within the first ten months of 2023.
Consequently, the total trade executed by the top ten stockbroking firms amounted to N1.61 billion, which represented 54.61 percent of the NGX transactions from January to October 2023.
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 29.56 billion shares during the same period, representing 12.61 percent of the total shares traded by investors. CardinalStone Securities traded 9.53 percent of the total shares traded by investors, amounting to 22.34 billion shares.
One of the largest transactions of the year was the acquisition of shares in First Bank, by a member of the FBN Holdings, 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 16.52 billion shares or 7.05 percent of the total trade while Morgan Capital traded 12.52 billion shares representing 5.34 percent of the ten-month transactions on the NGX.
APT Securities traded 11.11 billion shares, equivalent to 4.74 percent. Meristem Securities executed 8.11 billion shares; Stanbic IBTC traded 6.62 billion shares; Regency Assets traded 5.44 billion shares; PAC Securities executed 5.05 billion shares just as EFG Hermes traded 4.98 billion shares in the first ten months of this year.
Altogether, the top ten stockbroking firms traded 122.25 billion shares representing 52.13 percent of the total shares traded during the period.
