The capital market and equity failure in Nigeria

Abstract

The capital Markel is recognized in the literature as an important barometer for economic growth and development in a nation via its allocative efficiency properties. In investigating equity failure in Nigeria, the paper applied the predictive models developed for discriminant and logistic analyses for selecting equity stocks lo invest in. In the study relating to a sample of 47 Equity Issues from 45 Nigerian companies over the period 1988-92, two classificalion models were applied on a data set comprising macro and micro economic indicators, an industry variable and various accounting ratios. The models were the multiple discriminant and logistic regression models. Both models performed well and were able to classify equity issues correctly as failed or successful to a high degree (over 70 per cent correct classification). Overall, it was clear that for both models, the major warning signals appear to be low profitability, low dividends and high price earnings ratio. However. the precise variable characteristics evaluated in the two models do differ in some interesting ways.