Ghana Market Watch | May 14th 2015: Ghana market closed neutral today…

Accra, Ghana (Capital Markets in Africa):-  Ghana Stock exchange close neutral today, with the benchmark Composite index and financial index remained steady to close trading at 2,301.02 points and 2,333.81 points respectively. Likewise, the market capitalization remained unchanged at GHS 63,606 million.

Market activity was very low with total volume of 1,500 shares and total turnover of GHS 3,736.00 (lower than previous trading turnover by c.99.97 percent) exchanged in two shares. The two shares traded today were HFC Bank Limited Ghana and Unilever Ghana Limited with traded volume of 1,300 and 200 shares respectively. Likewise, the market sentiment was neutral (measured as advancers/decliners ratio) with no price movement.

Although, analyst expected trading activities to pick up at the Friday’s trading session and anticipated that Fan Milk Limited Ghana, CAL Bank Ghana and Ecobank Transnational Incorporated Togo to appreciate as a result of investors sentiment.

From the corporate broadcast, HFC Bank Limited Ghana announced that Republic Bank has acquired majority shareholding of the Bank following its mandatory takeover offer to the shareholders of HFC Bank to purchase ordinary shares of no par value in HFC Bank. The Offer closed at 17.00 hours on 7th May, 2015. Republic Bank now holds a total of 169,831,101 ordinary shares representing 57.11% of the total shareholding of HFC Bank.

On the foreign exchange market, the Ghanaian Cedi depreciated against all the major currencies today. Against the US dollar and the Euro, it shed off 0.36 percent (and had lost of 17.58 percent year-to-date) and 1.51 percent (with cumulative depreciation of 11.70 percent in 2015) to close at average rates of GHS 3.88 and GHS 4.41.