A wave of delistings has swept through the Nigerian Exchange (NGX), with nearly a dozen companies voluntarily pulling their shares from the market in the past two years.
This exodus stands in stark contrast to the robust activity seen on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE), Africa’s largest stock exchange.
According to analysts at Financial Derivative Company (FDC), these exits have largely been driven by factors such as low share liquidity, weak financial performance, and strategic reorganizations.
In contrast, South Africa’s 137-year-old exchange JSE recorded eleven IPOs in the last two years worth about $7.6 billion, compared to Nigeria’s three IPOS worth $3.1billion.
FDC pointed out that the Nigerian market is relatively illiquid, whereas the JSE continues to benefit from deep market liquidity, a mature infrastructure, strong institutional investor participation, and greater international visibility.
The exit of companies, many of which cited harsh operating environments, regulatory burdens, rising compliance costs, illiquidity, and poor market visibility, would continue to undermine the exchange’s ability to retain its appeal as a viable platform for capital raising and business growth.
Among the most notable exits were Union Bank of Nigeria, Ardova Plc, Consolidated Hallmark Insurance, Capital Hotels, Global Spectrum Energy, PZ Cussons, GSK , and Coronation Insurance.
Though there is still room for more, the NGX has achieved quite a feat this year. In just seven months to July 2025, Nigeria recorded N6 trillion ($3.95 billion) worth of equities transactions, the highest since 2007.
The NGX All-Share Index (ASI) has achieved a year-to-date return of +38.20 percent, At the same time, the JSE Africa All Share Index has a year-to-date return of 19.98 percent; however, it has a much larger market capitalization of ZAR21.31 trillion ($1.21 trillion) compared to Nigeria’s a market capitalization of N88.32 trillion ($54.47 billion).
The JSE does a daily average trade of ZAR 22 billion ($1.24 billion) in its equities market, one-third of Nigeria’s total volume traded in the first six months of 2025.
A notable trend driving listings is the unbundling of high-value subsidiaries by conglomerates to unlock shareholder value and attract new capital, FDC noted.
Here are a few of the things the JSE is doing right…
Creating a robust multi-asset platform:
Equities and bonds are the strongest asset classes in South Africa, with equities, in particular, both active and diverse. This has also led to a healthy and increasingly sophisticated derivatives market covering equity, currency, commodity, and interest-rate products.
The JSE has more than 800 listed securities and approximately 400 listed companies, together with 60 Equity market member firms. In addition, it also has trading, statistical index, and non-index data covering nearly 200 Indices.
Attractiveness to global companies:
The JSE saw eight new listings in 2024, including two that were converted from the UK and European markets. In 2025, Shuka Minerals Plc, a mining and exploration company also listed.
“But what we’re seeing now is a lot more companies from the UK and European markets interested in listing in South Africa,” Valdene Reddy, director of capital markets, told Euromoney in an interview.
The top 40 companies on its exchange are largely global majors. “So, we see South Africa serving as a growth platform, not just for South African companies but for global entities as well,” Reddy told Euromoney.
The exchange is also attracting international investment trusts, including firms such as UK-based Assura PLC, a listed real estate investment trust (REIT), which applied for a secondary listing on the JSE in November.
It has also started new global roadshows to attract new players.
Technological Improvement:
The JSE launched Colo 2.0, a cloud provider designed to offer low-latency, cost-efficient cloud services for brokers and institutional investors.
Investors can now utilise shared services in the cloud, which should attract bigger trading partners and deepen that liquidity. Additional features, such as the recently introduced self-match prevention mechanism, added to a continued focus on competitive pricing and a shift towards bringing in different block discovery mechanisms, should all combine to support greater scale.
It also launched the JSE-FIX, a new order routing service developed in collaboration with electronic trading solutions provider Rapid Addition. The service is designed to lower order transmission costs while offering a scalable, vendor-neutral solution for market participants.
