Monday Line APC’s IPO politics tribune.ng/news2013/index.php/en/columns/2012-10-29-11-16-41/monday-lines.html MID last week, microblogging platform, Twitter, went public with an Initial Public Offer (IPO) that spacecraft-like, fired co-founders Evan Williams and Jack Dorsey to billionaires club. While one moved to $2.95 billion mark, the other notched $1.6 billion. There are two political IPOs on offer in Nigeria also. Nigeria’s ruling party, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has, for some months now, advertised itself as a party ready for share poachers. The ruling party, which has enjoyed constant, continuous dominance of the political stock market, has grown very confident that it can’t suffer any de-marketing no matter what it does with its princely shares in the stock market. And so, some dudes in the All Progressives Congress (APC), with an eye on easy, good returns from smart investments in PDP shares, are all over the market square. The last one week has been particularly interesting. They criss-crossed the country with such dizzying speed that only the very wily in the business of politics could understand what is at stake. These buyers are not ordinary businessmen. They understand the product as blue chip and are staking all their bucks on it. They know how overwhelming the return on PDP investments could be if only the doors opened for them into this market remain open while the bidding lasts. The Twitter IPO, like Facebook’s last year, promised surprises and engendered same. It opened at $45.10 per share on the New York Stock Exchange, then almost immediately raced to $50 before setting at $44.90. While some market analysts, in their skepticism, viewed Twitter’s valuation as speculative “for a company that is still unprofitable,” the same cannot, seriously, be said of the shares on offer from the PDP. There are no questions - no knowledgeable questions - on how the stock will perform this year, next year and in the year of our Lord, 2015. Not at all. That is why the Machiavellian investors are racing from one stock exchange to the other across the country in a political mop-up operation. And that is why reasonable shareholders in the ‘PDP collective’ are stunned that members of their board of directors are diligently pursuing the winding up (or is it winding down) process of their political party. The minders of that business would insist that they are re-engineering the party. It is exactly like Yoruba’s proverbial plantain that is going rotten but its owner gloats in the market square that it is ripening! It will be nice to know the school that produced engineers now systematically breaking down their racing car mid-way into a Formula One! Spectators are not amused at all at the sanity in the systematic destruction of the car’s front tyres by engineers hired to maintain a trophy winning automobile. That is what is happening in the PDP and the wily lions of the APC appears set on buying the party — assets and all. I strongly recommend the Twitter ownership history to the hawks and the super hawks of the PDP. It is a story that confirms the truth in the fact of fate that seals fortune of some at low levels while others smile to the heavens in wealth. When you sell your shares at inauspicious times, you weep and gnash your teeth when shrewd dudes warehouse their gains. It happened to Twitter co-founder Biz Stone. He sold his shares in the company ahead of the IPO. He is poorer for it today. Another co-founder, Noah Glass, got kicked out of the company early. His holding is factual nil. Now, go back to the value of the fortune that smiled on the other two guys mentioned earlier, Williams and Dorsey — $2.95 billion and $1.6 billion — all for knowing how to own and keep valuable shares. The PDP does not appear to have that political sense because it lost and gained back valuables in the past. Why the present crisis appears fate-determining is because it is happening at a time of political (and economic) recession, whatever that means, time will explain. Now, the APC is a classic example of a company with diluted shares. It is a company in the process of recapitalisation. It wants to be called big, strong, profit-making, profit-sharing. That is why the old foxes and lions in its fold are sleepless and restless - openly ringing bells of appeals for holders of political gold credit cards in the PDP to come over and be part owners of the amoebic party. It has opened its own IPO! But, like Twitter, the profitability of the APC remains “speculative” given its “newness” and the volatility that goes with such shares. Whatever happens, some will make it big in real terms while the wealth of many will only be in the volume of the noise they make in praise of the lords of their manor- just as is the case in the PDP. Monday, 11 November 2013 00:00 Published in Monday Lines Written by Lasisi Olagunju
Posted on: Mon, 11 Nov 2013 19:51:56 +0000
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