Dangote Extols Stockbroking Community Over Group’s Feats

BY CHINYERE OBIORA, LAGOS – The President and Chief Executive Officer of Dangote Group, Alhaji Aliko Dangote has applauded Nigeria’s stockbroking community for its active part in Dangote Group’s success story.
He said the Dangote Group readily acknowledges the tremendous support from the community that has made it a global brand of repute.
“The truth is that the hard work recorded was not only me alone. It is for all of us and I truly appreciate what the capital market community has done,” Alhaji Dangote said.
Dangote, whose encomiums came at the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) in Lagos while sounding the closing gong in celebration of his 60th birthday, said what the Group is building today is part of the bigger picture and where we want to be in the next 10 years.
According to him, “My dream in the next 10 years is that we will be holding our Annual General Meeting (AGM) in the stadium, this means we are going to increase our investment in the Nigerian capital market. We will continue to diversify the economy, working with the government and to spread prosperity to Nigerians. We will list every single company that we created between now to the end of my life. Very soon, we will start having our AGM in stadium not halls due to the large shareholders we will be targeting. We will be having up to two million shareholders in the next ten years.”
In his remarks, former Chairman, Association of Stockbroking Houses of Nigeria (ASHON), Mr Rasheed Yussuf, described Dangote as an important stakeholder in the Nigerian capital market, adding that his decision to celebrate his birthday with the capital market community was a testimony to the mutually beneficial relationship involving Dangote, brokers and capital market over the years.
He said his time as chairman of ASHON, when Dangote became the president of the council of NSE, was the most challenging period for the capital market, adding that on one hand, NSE was faced with a serious management succession crisis, just as the market had to contend with the ravaging margin loans crisis.
According to him, “Dangote worked tirelessly with ASHON, leveraging on his numerous contacts to make presentation to the various level of government functionality, CBN, among others culminating in the setting up of AMCON and eventual resolution of the margin loan problems.”
He said if the margin loan crisis has not been resolved the way it was, the collateral damage on the operators and the market would have been so profound, adding that as a strong promoter of local content development in Nigeria, Dangote took the pioneering step of listing most of his companies on the floor of NSE, which substantially deepened the market.