Dialectic Africa Analyst

Dear Africa interested professionals:                                                      Find below the verbatim text from the SEC about the Brokerage Scandal in Nigeria.  This is classic example of the grandiose speeches  I mentioned in my last article that are more focused on self than transparency.  The SEC's response is largely defense and pacifying rather than providing clarity and answering questions.   Why did the media have to break a story more than four months after SEC knew about it?   Now, the SEC wants to respond and feel it is being proactive and transparent.  This issue will be buried before you can dig six feet.  It is Nigeria; nothing of this nature is new. People are talking as I write and the hook is gradually being removed from the mouth of the fish.  Victor Ogiemwonyi will not be sentenced to jail for any financial crime.  He has enough people that sit at the top of regulatory bodies to get him off the hook.   This is why I continue to repeat; nobody

Dear Africa interested professionals:                                                           I have incessantly spoken out about no proper system of checks and balances within some African Financial Markets.  Individuals continue playing musical chairs with influential positions to ensure they continue to have control over the financial marketplace and preserve their business deals while expanding their business empire.   Remember in 2014, when Access Bank (against extant rules in place) tried to freeze its share price for four months while it embarks on a rights issue to "preserve shareholder value?"  The freeze was on for a week until Arunma Oteh (SEC DG) at the time intervened and forced the freeze to be reversed.  Diamond Bank had completed its rights issue a few months earlier without seeking preferential treatment.   Partnership Investment Securities (owned by Victor Ogiemwonyi )   is currently embroiled in a financial scandal involving aggrandizement of clie

Dear Professionals:                                A little over a year and a half ago, I wrote two articles in two days about my concerns with companies audited by Deloitte based on my numerous experiences as an independent investment analyst. I will post both articles below.  In response to this article, some partner from Deloitte South Africa started chasing me around the internet with threats; he was obviously not thrilled with my truth telling which he deemed misleading lies. I always tell you readers, "posterity is never prejudiced."  Just as light and darkness will always reveal themselves, so also will the truth no matter how obfuscated it may initially appear.   Over the past month, Deloitte has been sanctioned by regulatory bodies in two different countries over poor audit oversight of its clients.   1. Deloitte has been hit with a record four million pounds fine by the Financial Reporting Council (FRC) after a five-year investigation into Deloitte'

Dear Africa interested individuals:                                                         On Monday, April 25, 2016, I wrote an article on this blog titled:  "Nigeria All-Share Index: Retail investors will determine how it moves."   I have been a vocal proponent of retail investors being given the necessary support to return in droves to the Nigerian stock market and for their outstanding grievances to be addressed e.g. the dividends not yet paid out for banks that were taken over by the Central Bank (Bank PHB, Afribank etc) during the tenure of Sanusi.  Where is the money?   No one is talking.  The Nigeria Stock Exchange (NSE) leadership has a different opinion.  Retail investors should be pushed to invest indirectly in the marketplace by investing in mutual funds instead of directly purchasing equities into their own accounts.  Some mutual fund companies were even engaged by the NSE to do investor education (of course marketing their funds) to retail investo

Dear Readers:                        The most disturbing business relationship in the world is one where one party compensates another party that is supposed to to be loyal to the society at large and uphold certain fiduciary principles.  You are paid by one party but, your allegiance is to a larger group that has not compensated you in cash and/or kind but expects your human values to trump monetary value.     Auditors get paid by the client but, the general public is expected to believe the audited financial statements meet certain standards and do not serve the selfish interests of the paying client. Equity, fixed income and alternative investments analysts get paid by companies and the public is expected to believe the published reports reflect the honest, selfless view of the analysts and not the business and personal interests of his/her employer who pays the analysts' wages and bonus.  A boss of mine once upon a time called equity research a 'game.'  Lying to

Dear Africa interested individuals:                                                                   Kenya has been in the nose in recent years with one accounting scandal after the other.  The scandals came into the public domain through aggrieved parties, Institute of Certified Public Accountants of Kenya (ICPAK) or foreign parent companies.  Investigations into the "cooking of the books" exposed corrupt dealings and outright looting in some cases.  These are definitely worrying developments as is the recent case of Tesco in the UK and Toshiba in Japan where profits were overstated. In Kenya, accounting scandals of note over the years are: 1. Uchumi Supermarkets 2. Mumias Sugar 3. Haco Tiger Brands 4. CMC Motors 5. Kenya Airways The only acknowledged accounting scandal in Nigeria till date is that involving Cadbury Nigeria.  On paper, corporate governance and cooking of the books is more prevalent in Kenya, than in Nigeria. I am of the strong opin

Dear Africa interested individuals:                                                                 Over the past one year under the leadership of Patrick Njoroge, three Kenya banks have gone into receivership and the National Bank of Kenya has had its CEO & CFO removed along with four others.  A net profit of 2.25B Ks by September 2015 turned into a net loss of 1.15B Ks by December 2015 for National Bank of Kenya.  Patrick Njoroge, has stated that " never again will fuzzy numbers and creative accounting be used to deceive investors in banks."  The system is rotten and he has decided to openly acknowledge it and resolved to clean up the system.  Kenya is in tune with the rot within its banking system and is putting in place a better structure and closer surveillance and reporting to restore investor confidence in its banking system. Let's take a five hour flight to Nigeria, the most visible frontier market in Africa.  Skye Bank reported a pretax profit of N1