Microsoft partners BusinessDay on Top 25 CEOs Awards

Microsoft is partnering BusinessDay on its Top 25 CEOs of quoted companies in Nigeria annual awards, which will now hold on Friday, March 20, 2015 at the Wheatbaker Hotel, Ikoyi, Lagos.
The annual event is being coordinated by BusinessDay Research and Intelligence Unit (BRIU) and BusinessDay Conferences and Events.

The change of date was necessitated by the need to allow some of the winners to put finishing touches to their 2015 programmes. Due to the increasing recognition and acceptance of the annual event among CEOs of quoted companies in Nigeria, this year’s award dinner is exclusively sponsored by Microsoft Lumia.

The yearly event was introduced in order to recognise and celebrate the chief executive officers of listed companies on the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) who contributed to the progress of the Nigerian capital market yearly. Winners are selected from over 200 listed companies on the NSE after they have successfully met the criteria set up by the awards committee.

Speaking on the partnership, Kabelo Makwane, managing director, Microsoft Nigeria, said, “We are quite excited at the opportunity to collaborate with BusinessDay in recognising and celebrating top CEOs who have contributed immensely to Nigeria’s economic advancement. We look forward to interacting with these captains of industry and understanding how technology can enable their business to succeed. As the platform and productivity company in the cloud first mobile first world, we believe in excellence which is why we continually develop products, solutions and services that help individuals and organisations do more and be more.”

To be selected for screening, the share prices of the listed companies should have outperformed the NSE’s All Share Index (ASI) of which the worst case scenario is a zero growth because ASI closed in the red last year at negative 16 percent; companies must have released their quarterly results timely, and recorded improvement in profit after tax (PAT) in their latest quarterly results.

Four companies from the banking sub-sector made the list this year. The four banks collectively made N80.13 billion as PAT as at Q3 end 2014. That was 57 percent better than N50.89 billion PAT they realised in comparable period in 2013. In addition, they added N93.33 billion to their market capitalisation last year.
A winner each emerged from the cement and food and beverages sub-sectors just as there are three winners from the healthcare sector. The three firms made N672 million PAT as at Q3 2014 as against N390 million they realised in comparable period in 2013. Their market capitalisation increased by N1.75 billion within the last financial year.

Two CEOs claimed the industrial sector awards. Their PAT for the period stood at N1.46 billion as against N1.05 billion in the corresponding period in 2013 and in addition to that, added N6.67 billion to their market capitalisation.

The CEOs of six insurance companies made it on the award list. Collectively, their Q3 2014 PAT stood at N5.49 billion compared with N3.33 billion in comparable period in 2014. Most of the quoted insurance companies are presently trading at their nominal values, therefore, only one added N9.05 billion to his company’s market capitalisation in 2014.

Other winners are the CEOs of a microfinance bank, two oil and gas firms, a printing press, and two IT firms. The CEO of one of the oil and gas firms has now won the award back to back.