Hello everyone and welcome to @Nairametrics Corporate News Roundup for the week ended May 10, 2020.

This thread is brought to you by @BluechipTechNG.   

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As usual, kindly retweet this thread so that others on your timeline may see and engage. If you are just seeing this thread for the first time, we do this every Sunday at 10pm, basically bringing you bitesize news from Corporate Nigeria.

This week, we’ve got news about some appointments, effects of oil price crash on firms, milestones, partnership deals and companies that provided relief materials to ease the burden on people.

We have news about companies that posted either 2019 Full Year, or First Quarter financial results, and one that gave reasons for laying off some employees.
  
Let’s begin from there…

1/ No doubt, one of the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic is massive job loss. About 135 staff of Andela were suddenly laid off across five countries like Nigeria, US, Egypt, Kenya and Uganda.

There were no layoffs in Ghana and Rwanda, although the possibility of this happening in the near future abounds.
However, the company stated that no Andela software engineer was affected by what it described as the headcount reduction exercise.

Similar to so many other technology companies around the world, it said that it was not immune to the challenges of COVID-19, and the current global economic market required firms to conserve resources.

2/ On appointments, President Muhammadu Buhari approved the appointment of Sunday Thomas as the substantive Commissioner for Insurance/Chief Executive Officer, National Insurance Commission (NAICOM).

Thomas, who replaced the immediate past Acting Commissioner for Insurance, Mohammed Kari, has over 30 years experience, in the industry, both as an operator and a regulator. He was appointed Deputy Commissioner in Charge of Technical matters by Buhari in April 2017.

The new NAICOM boss was formerly Director General of the Nigerian Insurers Association in 2010.

3/ The Deputy Governor, Economic Policy, Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Kingsley Obiora, took over as the Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Nigerian Export-Import Bank (NEXIM).

He replaces Joseph Nnanna, who was a former Deputy Governor of CBN and retired from the Board of NEXIM in February 2020.

This was disclosed in a statement to the general public, signed by the Head, Strategy & Corporate Communications of NEXIM Bank, Tayo Omidiji, on Wednesday, May 6, 2020.

The statement says: "With this appointment, Obiora will provide leadership to a multidisciplinary team of professionals that constitute the board of the bank, towards ensuring that the...

…bank achieves its mandate of promoting economic diversification and development of the Nigerian non-oil export sector."

4/ Following the global oil price crash that has seen Brent Crude decline by as much as 60%, Oando Plc disclosed that it had decided to cut down on its CAPEX and operating costs.

These are some of the immediate changes that the Nigerian oil company is making in a bid to cushion the effects of the economic fallout from the oil price crash. Earlier, the company ensured to hedge all of its barrels just as a precautionary measure.

Oando's Chief Operating Officer, Ainojie Alexander Irune, disclosed all this when he joined CNN's Julia Chatterley to talk about the global oil price crash and its effects on the Nigerian economy.

5/ Despite the economy’s lull, some organisations recorded some feats. One of them is the Nigerian Stock Exchange, which has enjoyed significant rallies in recent weeks.

As the Exchange sustains remote trading, free flow of information and vibrant market activity, the index has accelerated to +16.39% in the past month and ranks second in Bloomberg’s best performing indexes within the period.

Several factors have been identified as the reasons for this rally, including oil price recovery, the gradual easing of the lockdown in several economies, and the expectation of dividend payments, attracting investors to blue-chip stocks.

This is @Nairametrics thread BTU by @BluechipTechNG

6/ Cadbury Nigeria's board of directors met last Wednesday to deliberate on some important company matters.

One of the resolutions they reached was that the company's management should continue all existing business transactions with Mondelez International and all its subsidiaries and partners. This was for an extended period of one year.

In a corporate action that was issued earlier on Thursday, Cadbury Nigeria informed the Nigerian Stock Exchange and other stakeholders that its board members also ratified...

…all existing transactions that were earlier entered into with Mondelez International, its subsidiaries, and other business partners.