The Institute of Capital Market Registrars (ICMR) on Tuesday said that N1.004 trillion was declared as dividends by quoted companies on the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) in the last decade. The ICMR Registrar/Chief Executive Officer, Dr David Ogogo, gave the quoted companies dividends profile in Lagos. Ogogo said that the dividends were declared between Dec. 31, 2003 and Dec. 31, 2013.
He attributed the increase in dividends to the number of highly capitalised companies quoted on the nation’s bourse. According to him, outstanding unclaimed dividends in the nation’s capital market stood at N50.94 billion as at Dec. 31, 2013. The ICMR President/Chairman of Council, Mr Bayo Olugbemi, recently said that the unclaimed dividends figure represented 5.05 per cent of the total dividends declared by quoted companies in the past 10 years.
Olugbemi said the current level of unclaimed dividends was a marked improvement compared with over 20 per cent in previous years. He said that the efforts by regulators and registrars had drastically reduced the level of unclaimed dividends in the nation’s capital market. Olugbemi, also the Managing Director, First Registrars Ltd., said the volume might appear big because the value of dividends declared by companies in recent times were huge compared to 10 years ago.
He said that the efforts of regulators and registrars had yielded significant results in reducing unclaimed dividends in the market.
“Years back, the percentage of unclaimed dividends was around 24 per cent. But we have reduced it to below 20 per cent, 10 per cent and 5.05 per cent in December 2013,” he said. Olugbemi said that market stakeholders were still doing more to bring it further down.
