Ghana Stock Exchange Now 3rd Largest

The Ghana Stock Exchange (GSE) is now the third largest capital market in sub-saharan Africa, after South Africa and Nigeria.

This comes after the official listing of Tullow Oil PLC on the exchange on Wednesday July 27, 2011 which has more than doubled the market capitalization.

With a market value of about Gh�28.5 billion, the company through the listing has raised the GSE�s market capitalization from the little over Gh�20bn to almost Gh�49 bn. This is also as a result of the introduction of the company�s over 900 million internationally listed shares on the local bourse.

However, out of this lot, only the over 3.5 million shares offered recently can be traded in Ghana with a chunk of the shares also currently in the hands of institutional investors like SSNIT.

Market players have therefore cast doubt on the potential of the company�s listing to improve liquidity on the market. In response, the Chief Financial Officer of Tullow Oil PLC, Ian Springett has told Citi Business News, the company is more excited about the long term prospects the listing offers Ghanaians.

�I do appreciate that some investors like to look to Tullow as a very good proposition for long term value growth so may hold on for the long term. I think we�ll just see how it trades but hopefully it will still be a favourably moving share price.

�It really depends upon the institutions and how long they intend to hold the shares for and what their plans are. It may not improve the liquidity, but it certainly is an excellent opportunity. Remember that we�ve now got 10,000 shareholders and there�s probably many millions of shareholders involved through SSNIT as well so we think this is a great first opportunity for Ghanaians to participate in Tullow.

�Today�s listing was very very successful, we�ll see what happens in terms of liquidity, in terms of future trading, we�ll work with the Ghana Stock Exchange and see what happens after that.

The company�s first day of trading saw the share price increase marginally from the initial Gh�31 to Gh�31.08 after trade in 200 of the shares. Stock brokers who spoke to Citi Business News however indicated this was normal, largely because this was the first day of trading and investors had just bought their shares.

Tullow Oil�s is not only the first oil company to list on the Ghana Stock Exchange but also the company to have undertaken its all-time largest primary offer on the exchange.

By: Citifmonline.com/Ghana