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National Investment Trust Limited (NITL), the country’s first collective investment scheme, is set to list on the Malawi Stock Exchange (MSE) on March 21 this year.
MSE operations manager John Kamanga said on Tuesday the MSE board approved the listing of NITL’s 135 million ordinary shares on the local bourse.
“NITL’s listing date is very soon. It will list on March 21, 2005,” he said.
This development will raise the number of domestic listed counters to nine from the current eight.
Other companies listed on the domestic counter are Blantyre Hotels Limited, Stanbic Bank, National Bank of Malawi, Nico Holdings Limited, Press Corporation Limited, Packaging Industries Malawi Limited, Illovo Sugar (Malawi) Limited and Sunbird Tourism. Old Mutual plc is the only foreign counter on MSE.
And in a pre-listing statement published yesterday, NITL said the listing will stop over-the-counter trading of the collective investment scheme’s shares on MSE by stockbrokers.
Prior to the listing, 40 million NITL shares were offered to the public in October 2002 before another 89 million shares were offered and taken up last November.
NITL is a brainchild of the Privatisation Commission established in 2001 to facilitate broad public participation in a diverse portfolio of equity investments.
Individuals hold 88.06 percent of NITL’s shares, other corporate investors have 1.85 percent, investments and trusts hold 3.74 percent while pension and provident investors have 5.28 percent and insurance and life assurance firms hold 1.07 percent, according to the pre-listing statement.
NITL’s shares are currently trading at K2.65 each over-the-counter. They gained K0.45 to trade at K2.20 each at the beginning of the Trust’s stock trades last December.
NITL’s second public offer last November and December generated a lot of interest from the investing public as evidenced by the oversubscription by 130 percent.
Stockbrokers have touted NITL as a low risk, low cost and transparent investment.
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