The Group Chief Executive officer, Guarantee Trust Holding Company, GTCO Segun Agbaje has disclosed that the long-term goal of establishing the parent company, is to make it among top five financial institutions in Africa.
GTCO was recently listed on the Nigerian Exchange, NGX and many have been wondering about the prospect of the new company amid stiff competition among top financial institutions in the country a la Africa. But Agbaje said the resources of the holding company will be harnessed to ensure that GTCO leads others in terms of new investment and creating more opportunity in both the money and capital markets.
He spoke during the closing gong ceremony to commemorate the listing of GTCO Plc on the NGX in Lagos on Tuesday, noting that the company was not unaware of the cut throat competition in the sector.
He said the synergy between the capital market/ money market is key to ensure more injection of funds into the financial system
According to him “I think we all got spooked after the financial crisis and so we have stopped doing margin loans and leverages one to one. A good financial system must overcome challenges like that and find a way to do safe margin loans and hopefully, we learnt something from the past and find a way to go back to doing that as there is no way a stock market can grow if it is only driven by people’s money and so we must find a way to design leverage again and put it back.
“Anchoring the synergy between the capital market and money market stakeholders require many ways or strategies and one of the easiest way is that when you have an asset management tower, you start to create portfolios and your portfolios will have money market instruments or have equities in it and one of the reasons for doing this today is to create portfolios with both retail and Holdco so that people can go into anyone.
“I think the reason why we have missed the synergy is that a lot of asset management companies and a lot of investments are not being done on a portfolio basis and people are either investing in either money market or equities and the trick is to design portfolios that have the two (money market and capital market instruments) as regards to risk appetite that will determine the percentages you play with,” Agbaje said.
Meanwhile, the Chief Executive Officer, NGX, Temi Popoola has commended the board and management of GTCO Plc for its successful restructuring assuring that the NGX will continue to partner GTCO and other listed companies and issuers in the Exchange to grow the capital market.
