Customs Street Advisors

This week in Alrroya, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) business and financial daily, I champion the beneficial role that media interviews can play in raising the profile of companies among the investment community and addressing malignant information asymmetry.

Most public company executives regard media interviews as a distraction. In their view, they would rather be running their companies. As far as they are concerned, there is a dichotomy between minding the store and talking about the store. Read More…

This week on Street Talking in NEXT, I discuss the importance of design in encouraging shareholders to actually want to study annual reports, which is indispensable if they are to understand the business environment, strategy and operations of companies enough to hold boards accountable.

Collecting annual reports is my pet passion. For Christmas, my partner gave me the 2009 edition of the Graphis Annual Report, a coffee-table worthy tome of report design, which I had long fantasized over. At my local post office, I have gained some notoriety for receiving cartons of annual reports from all around the world. I enjoy studying the layout, language, typography, colours, photography, illustrations and paper. At home, I have a room stacked to the ceiling with reports. Just looking at them in that rainbow array is as visually satisfying to me as any aficionado’s art collection. Read More…

This week in Alrroya, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) business and financial daily, I discuss the role that robust disclosure rules can play in averting a repetition of the turmoil that has engulfed the market in the past two years. I have no doubts that the markets would pick up again, but if shareholders fail to draw the right lessons from past experience and companies refuse to change their ways accordingly, then it is only a matter of time before we have another panic season on our hands.

All fingers have been burnt, but some are more charred than others. Across the world, what started as a localized US sub-prime crisis, and later snowballed into a global credit crunch, has not been good to shareholders. While business partners, customers, employees and host communities have all been hit by the turmoil, shareholders have borne the brunt of the pain. They were the first in and it is now clear that they will be the last out. Read More…

This week in Alrroya, the United Arab Emirates business and finance daily, I discuss the demands by international fund managers on public companies in frontier markets like Nigeria to improve their corporate governance and risk management processes.

Frontier markets like Ghana, Kenya and Nigeria are being forced to grow up. Their indulgent childhood is fast coming to an end. Global investors have lost their patience and expect companies in these fringe economies to begin to act like adults. That means that they will be held to the same accountability and responsibility standards as their developed market peers. Companies in these emerging emerging markets can no longer serve as capricious extensions of the personal piggy banks of the founders or government. This should come as no surprise. To a keen observer, it was only a matter of time before the petting ended. Read More…

This week on Street Talking in NEXT, I argue that the time has come for public companies on the Nigerian Stock Exchange to lay down rules on the extra-company activities of directors, particularly those which involve regulatory responsibility or political involvement.

I have just finished reading a stimulating piece by Femi Awoyemi of ProShare on the potential conflicts of interest Senator Udo Udoma, the City grandee and chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), will be exposed to in his latest appointment as the chairman of UAC. To calm public concerns over any ethical risks he may run, Senator Udoma, who also sits on the boards of Nestlé and Linkage Assurance, has issued a staunch defense on the correctness of his appointment. The last time this subject provoked a passionate debate was over the position of Professor Ndi Okereke-Onyiuke, director-general of the Nigerian Stock Exchange, as chairman of Transnational Corporation, a quoted company. Read More…

In announcements on strategic actions, companies often present the singular act as sufficient cause for a boost in shareholder value. This week in Street Talking on NEXT, I argue that that is not enough. To enjoy a higher valuation, companies need to improve the information environment to give investors a clearer view on the business. Simply focusing on other companies that have enjoyed higher trading multiples consequent to such transactions misses the subsequent actions they took in ensuring that the markets had a better understanding of their value creating actions.

This week marks the second anniversary since Apple, the maker of iconic products, announced its entry into the mobile handset space with the iPhone. On the same day Steve Jobs, its CEO, demoed the phone at the January 2007 MacWorld Conference, the company changed its name from Apple Computer to simply Apple, Inc. The Cupertino, California-based company’s decision to excise ‘computer’ from its name was intended to reflect its transition from solely designing and making personal computing products with cult status to a broader portfolio of consumer electronics goods and services, including on-line distribution of music, home entertainment systems, digital audio players, cellphones, software and of course, computers with wider appeal outside its core geek demographic. Read More…

This week in Street Talking on NEXT, I argue that the corporate social responsibility initiatives by companies on the Nigerian Stock Exchange ought to aim further than philanthropic gestures to a broader set of objectives of significance to socially responsible fund managers.

The story I am about to recount is not intended as a joke. Just the other day, I stopped at my roadside vulcanizer’s to peak my tire pressure. Fill done, I brought out my wallet to pay. As I made to pay, Musbau, the head vulcanizer, smiled at me and announced with all the benevolence he could muster, ‘Oga, no worry. Today, na free as part of my own corporate social responsibility.’ Corporate social what? Obviously, my shock at his familiarity with the term failed to register. ‘Yes, I don decide make I dash my customers free air today as part of Christmas appreciation,’ he beamed. Read More…

This week on Street Talking on NEXT, I review the tactics of shareholder agitants on the Nigerian Stock Exchange in 2009 and identify why they enjoy very limited success in galvanizing popular support.

In his famous 1947 essay, ‘The Sources of Soviet Power’, George Kennan, the late distinguished foreign policy wonk, writing under the pseudonym ‘X’, advised the US government that only ‘the adroit and vigilant application of counterforce at a series of constantly shifting geographical and political points’ could contain Russia’s imperial ambitions. His ideas would lead the US to sponsor several proxy wars in countries far removed from the epicenter of its vital interests such as Angola, Laos and Vietnam. Read More…

This week in Street Talking on NEXT, I discuss the critical role company websites can play  in closing the mispricing gap between stock prices and the underlying value of companies on the Nigerian Stock Exchange.

I am appalled at the failure of most companies on the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) to utilize the web for investor engagement. In fact, about half of the companies on the NSE do not have any web presence at all. Among those that do, only a small number leverage the channel for investor communications despite the fact that a growing number of investors make decisions to buy, hold or sell stocks based on information they find on the Internet. If it is axiomatic that information is the lifeblood of markets, then company websites ought to be the most credible and authoritative sources for relevant, reliable and timely information. Read More…

This week in Street Talking on NEXT, I share my views on the probable preoccupations of shareholders and boards in the coming year.

As the year draws to an end, it is tempting to make prognostications for the coming year. If I had to identify the main trends contending for top spots on the investment community agenda in the coming year, I would forecast a rise in shareholder interest in corporate governance and heightened monitoring of capital structure evolution as it impacts the stakes of antecedent shareholders. My outlook is that passive shareholder acquiescence will be replaced by active participation in strategic decision-making, particularly among holders of non-negligible blocs of stock.

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