By Chinwendu Obienyi
The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has urged the Lagos Futures and Commodities Exchange (LCFE) to have investor protection at the centre of its operations to improve investor confidence and attract more investments.
Director General of the SEC, Lamido Yuguda, gave the charge during the presentation of Eko Gold Coins to the Management of the Commission by the Lagos Futures and Commodities Exchange in Abuja, recently.
Yuguda specifically urged the LCFE and its entire value chain to always have investor protection at the core of its work as this will eventually make the product succeed.
The SEC DG stated that when people invest, they are postponing current consumption for future consumption, need to be paid some returns as a price for postponement of current consumption.
According to him, “So when you sell a product in the future and make gain, you are actually being rewarded, but when you sell the product in the future and you make a loss, you are making two losses. One, you are postponing current consumption and two you have not recovered your principal in the future. When people do that, as it happened in the stock market in 2008, you find out that investor confidence wanes.
“So when we do things, we should have investor protection and investor interest at heart, you find out that you create a product, everything you are doing tells you this is the direction I am going. So when you see that product deviating, you go back to the drawing table and say I must make sure that investors make money out of this. If we do that the sky is the limit for this product and that you have demonstrated today”.
Yuguda commended the LCFE for the demonstration and presentation and assured the management of the Commission’s support in the development of the products and in the efforts to enlighten both the market participants and investors who will put in their money.
In his remarks, Chairman, Board of Directors, Lagos Commodities and Futures Exchange, Chief Onyewenchukwu Patrick Ezeagu, said that the core vision of setting up LCFE was to provide a viable structure that will transform the Nigerian commodities market and redefine practice standards which would catalyse economic growth in Nigeria.