Brokerage firm calls for closer scrutiny to raise confidence

November 15, 2017 in Business, Companies, Finance, Financial Services, Policy by Editor

November 15— Robert Baldwin, the Chief Executive Officer of Crested Capital, a brokerage firm, has suggested that companies in his line of business should open up their finances to public scrutiny as a matter of routine and not just annually.

Baldwin (right) lines up with some of his top staff to receive the ‘Brokerage Organisations for Outstanding Achievement in Financial Reporting’ Award.

“It should be mandatory for Capital Markets Authority (CMA) licensees such as investment advisors, fund managers, and stockbrokers to make their audited financial statements available to the public on a continuous basis not just once-a-year in the newspapers,” he said.

Baldwin was speaking at the recent Financial Reporting Awards (FiRe) hosted by the Institute of Certified Public Accountants of Uganda (ICPAU) in Kampala. Once again this year, Crested Capital won in the category of ‘Brokerage Organisations for Outstanding Achievement in Financial Reporting’ an award it also claimed at its introduction in the 2016 FiRe edition.

Crested Capital are members of the Uganda Securities Exchange licensed by the CMA to provide non-bank financial services including investment advisory, research and publications, brokerage, and dealing in equities and government securities.

Baldwin said, “Greater financial disclosure from market intermediaries improves confidence in the capital markets and will ultimately prove beneficial to the licensees themselves as well as the investing public. I encourage small and medium enterprises (SMEs) who are seeking debt or equity capital through a public listing on the Uganda Securities Exchange to invest in high quality external audits and participate in competitions such as the FiRE Awards.”

The FiRe Awards is an annual event whose aim is to promote best practices in financial reporting in Uganda.

Protazio Begumisa, the ICPAU President advised more organizations to embrace the drive to improve financial reporting and ‘unlock the value beyond numbers for the development of our nation’ which was this year’s theme.