The Ethiopian Capital Market Authority has granted Ethio Fidelity Securities S.C. a securities dealer licence, the first issued under Ethiopia's new capital market framework.
The licence authorises the firm to deal in securities both for clients and on its own account. It follows a review of the firm's capital adequacy, governance arrangements, risk management framework and the fitness and propriety of its directors and senior management.
Ethiopia's capital market is being built from the ground up, and the institutions being licensed now will set the standards that later entrants are measured against. We take that seriously. A market earns the confidence of savers slowly and can lose it quickly, and the difference is usually in the unglamorous parts: how orders are handled, how conflicts are managed, how clearly costs are disclosed.
The firm will now proceed toward trading membership of the Ethiopian Securities Exchange.