Read an article from the Washington Post where the Chairman on the US Securities & Exchange Commission, Christopher Cox, is intrigued by the idea of using blogs to disseminate important corporate information.
“A 2000 rule known as fair disclosure ended a long-standing practice of companies providing significant information to stock analysts and other Wall Street insiders ahead of the public.”
Monday’s naked insider manipulation of Citi Trust shares should have been a wake up call for NSE on information and rules for prices and trades. Watch to see if there’s any recall or punishment stemming from the ill-fated trade.
This is very important because currently pension funds, Kenyans in the Diaspora, farmers and other new investors are all stepping into the market and things like the Citi Trust fiasco tend to undermine our confidence in shares. The share splits of EA Cables and ICDCI were self-fulfilling prophecies – share price shoots up about 6X in a few months, leading directors to announce splits to make them more affordable.
”when you attract foreign investors, you also attract criminals who specialise in economic crimes” – Tommy Prins of Deloitte
Related NSE needs EDGAR
New age for investors
The Nation’s Weekly Advertiser interviews the brains behind Eight.co.ke, Jijini Markets and Stock Detective who offer financial information on activities at the Nairobi Stock Exchange. Pick up this weeks’ free copy of the newspaper around town in Nairobi and hopefully the story will appear soon on their website. (ed: none are affiliated with the NSE)
Upcoming @ NSE
– Barclays Rumour: The Bank will announce a 5 for 1 share split and a 1 for 38 bonus. Note: I don’t own any Barclays shares
– Riba Capital tips on the next Mumias offer.
– Family Finance Building Society will offer 15 million new shares to account holders at 60 shillings each (minimum placement is 30,000 shillings). The ongoing offer runs to the end of the month and may overshadow the, rather low key, Eveready IPO (which starts next Monday) in the same way Equity Bank’s listing stole the limelight (and perhaps investor cash) from Uchumi’s re-capitalizations earlier this year.
Family Finance mimics Equity which also raised 500 million shillings in capital in August 2005. FFBS was expected to be a licensed as a commercial bank by June 2006 but that has likely been delayed by the Central Bank until they shore up more share capital.