ARM Investment Managers Limited on Wednesday listed two mutual funds on the Memorandum Listing of the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE). The listing paved way for investors in the mutual funds to trade on their holdings and for other investors to buy into the funds.
ARM listed 1.0 million units of its ARM Eurobond Fund at $1.0 nominal value per unit. It also listed 500 million units of ARM Fixed Income Fund at a nominal value of N1 per share.
Meanwhile, a recent survey of African fund managers showed that most investment decision-makers consider governance, good regulation and availability of market data and prices in making decisions to invest or not in a market.
The survey of 50 African asset-managers for the African Exchanges Linkage Project (AELP) project found that key factors when African fund managers choose new markets were market regulation, investor regulation and availability of market data and prices.
According to the survey, other top criteria that help fund managers choose where to invest included levels of dealing price, efficiency of execution and commission, the quality of companies and investment opportunities, corporate, social and governance criteria and availability of research.
Three quarters of investors said they were reluctant to invest in small and illiquid markets or where valuations are excessive while only half decide to invest in a company based on its dividend policy, while valuation and governance are the top factors.
Asset managers in Nigeria and the francophone West African countries are the most optimistic about prospects for Africa’s economies. In the AELP poll, some 97 per cent of the surveyed Nigerian asset managers are optimistic about the continent, with average assets of $364 million under management, followed by 85 per cent of surveyed francophone asset managers, who averaged $416 million of assets managed. Average across all the survey respondents, including a couple of South African managers, was $4.1 billion in assets under management.
Optimism is also strong among asset managers surveyed in Mauritius, Morocco, Nairobi and Egypt. Nearly half of respondents manage assets with investment horizons over five years, another 23 per cent for three to five years.
