The Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) has named Florence Seriki, group managing director of Omatek Ventures Plc, as the Growth Ambassador of the Alternative Securities Market (ASeM), a specialised board for listing of small and mid-sized companies with high growth potential.
Formerly known as the Second Tier Securities Market (SSM), ASeM is being repositioned to play a vital role in deepening the Nigerian Capital Market and to emerge as a board, which is entrepreneurial, growth oriented, forward-looking, modern and innovative.
This development was contained in a letter to Seriki, signed by Haruna Jalo-Waziri, executive director, business development of the NSE. The Exchange described a Growth Ambassadors as an accomplished individual who is committed to developing entrepreneurship in Nigeria.
As a Growth Ambassador, she is expected to support, endorse and promote growth of emerging businesses in Nigeria on ASeM. This will involve attendance of ASeM events and advocating for listing on ASeM at other events as appropriate.
Jalo-Waziri said the Exchange is poised to continually develop ASeM, making it attractive and accessible to emerging companies, while providing the benefits of being a publicly quoted company in the Nigerian Stock Exchange.
Seriki, in her response to the appointment, said she will leverage on the experience of about 30 years as an entrepreneur, to ensure that the platform becomes a viable template for emerging businesses seeking to raise long term capital at relatively low cost from the capital market, while creating opportunities for growth and institutionalisation of companies listed on the board.
ASeM seeks to provide the required platform to address some major challenges faced by emerging companies in Nigeria. These challenges include, but are not limited to, difficulty in accessing long term capital due to high cost of funds as a result of perceived high risk; informal nature of operations; and inadequate accounting standards, controls and management of resources.
Some of the initiatives undertaken to date and which are expected to be built upon by the ambassadors include the review of listing requirements, making listing on ASeM readily accessible and affordable to a wide range of viable emerging businesses with high growth potential; introduction of designated adviser programme to support companies listed on ASeM in complying with post listing obligations and maintaining their listing status; introduction of ASeM Growth Ambassador (GA) Programme to project the ASeM brand and support the advocacy and quotations drive of The Exchange as well as introduction of a bouquet of value added services to assist listed companies to maximize their listing status.
With her doggedness, Seriki has transformed Omatek as the pioneer factory on the African continent involved in the production of computers, casings and speakers from completely knocked-down (CKD) components. Operating at 25 per cent capacity utilisation, the Omatek Computer factory rolls out, per annum, 120,000 speakers, 120,000 casings and 48,000 fully-built PCs. Interestingly, the Omatek factory now assembles OEM brands for other brand builders, both local and foreign.
