The trading on the shares of Sunu Assurances Nigeria Plc on the floor of the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) has been put on hold as part of the company’s recapitalisation plans, the Managing Director, Samuel Ogbodu, has said.
Ogbodu, in a statement made available to reporters, said this followed the company’s application to the Exchange for share capital reconstruction.
He stated that this was also in line with the special resolutions passed by the shareholders at the Extra-Ordinary General Meeting (EGM) held last March in favour of the company’s proposal to carry out a share capital reconstruction through its stockbroker, FSDH Securities Limited, which submitted an application for the share capital reconstruction to the Nigerian Stock Exchange.
He further stated that the share capital reconstruction was adopted as the more efficient approach to create room for new equity capital issuances.
Ogbodu explained that the suspension of the company shares became necessary to allow for closure of the company’s register of members in order to determine shareholders eligible for the share capital reconstruction as at the qualification date of October 16, 2020.
He added that the period of the suspension is from October 19 2020 to October 30, 2020.
“The shortfall between our paid-up capital and NAICOM’s new capital requirement of N10 billion for non-life insurance companies was N7.71 billion as at September 30, 2019. The purpose of the share capital reduction was to allow for the issuance of new ordinary shares by way of a rights issue and private placement, in order for the company to comply with the recently revised share capital requirement by the National Insurance Commission (NAICOM) for insurance companies.
SUNU Assurance Group acquired 60 per cent equity of the former Equity Assurance Plc in 2016 and renamed it SUNU Assurances Nigeria Plc. SUNU Assurance has operations in not less than 12 Franco-phone African countries and the acquisition of Equity Assurance was a major entry strategy into the Anglo-phone countries.
