• Thursday, March 28, 2024
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Comercio Partners recounts achievements after 5yrs

Tosin-Osunkoya

Comercio Partners Limited, an investment and financial advisory company that commenced operation on June 13, 2016 said it has achieved a lot after five years of operating in a wobbling economy.

The company participated in raising debt capital structure of Lagos State in 2020. Apart from that the company has rightly been involved in a lot of other land mark transactions.

“We are advisor to insurance firm that has been advised by the National Insurance Commission, (NAICOM) to recapitalise,” Steve Osho, co-managing partner, Comercio Partners Capital, noted at a media session, to commemorate the company’s fifth anniversary in Lagos.

Also in attendance were Tosin Osunkoya, co-managing partner/ head, investment, and Nnamdi Nwizu, co-managing partner/head, trading.

“We just concluded one of the landmark transactions in the financial capital market in Nigeria, which was what we call the green Sukuk bond and you can see that attention is moving from raising conventional bond to more sustainable energy,” he said.

Comercio Partners packaged the company which hitherto does not have much of traction in terms capital flow in the industry but has the structure.

“What we did was to package them and to raise capital for the bond market. In the next few days, that bond is going to be listed in the FMDQ exchange,” he said.

Osho noted the company’s continued contribution towards inculcating financial literacy among children. The firm is investing in communities, individuals, and local economies to prepare them for the opportunities of today — and tomorrow, closing financial literacy education gap through online bootcamps for children between the ages or 8-16.

However, beyond 2021, Osunkoya said “the targets we set for ourselves for the next five years is for Comercio Partners to be a one- stop-shop and what that means is that as a client if you are looking to do any kind of financial transaction or looking for financial services; Comercio Partners should be the first thought”.

He said what the firm is planning to do in the next five years is to begin to capture the minds of the retail investing community, institutional investors, high net worth individuals and others.

“How do we achieve that? What we set out for ourselves is to set up an organogram where you would have different entities under a Holdco structure. So we plan to have a regional bank, a merchant bank in the next two to three years,” he said.

Osunkoya explained that the company’s plan was to continue providing financial advisory and assets management services to domestic and international investors in the Sub-Saharan African Capital Markets that are interested in the new emerging frontier market in Nigeria.

“We plan to have a regional bank or a merchant bank in the next two or three years, we also plan to retain those entities that are in existence right now. So you have the trading arm of the business- which is commercial trading, Comercio Asset management and Comercio Partners capital.”

Responding to questions on external reserves, Nwizu said one key thing Nigeria needs to do is to grow it foreign exchange reserves.

“What has happened now is that we have very little participation from the foreign investors. As long as that continues to happen, you will continue to see depreciation of the currency and reduced participation from them in the fixed income space even in the equities space,” he said.

Nwizu said if Nigeria’s reserves can start growing, getting more dollar receivables, there would be a lot more interest in foreign investors then the currency will appreciate or stabilise, which also would reduce the imported inflation in the market.

He was concerned that insecurity is helping to spur inflation in the food sector. “If that can be sorted we basically see yields start to come back down, equities market looking more attractive again,” he said.