The President’s Merit Award was inaugurated in 1972 by The Nigerian Stock Exchange in the course of discharging its mandate as a Self-Regulatory Organisation (SRO). The Award is aimed at promoting corporate governance and creating healthy competition among quoted companies. It is an annual event conceived as a follow-up to a series of guidelines aimed at encouraging greater disclosure of information to shareholders by the management of quoted companies.

Essentially, the award is given to quoted companies which excel in the comprehensiveness of their annual reports and accounts and the orderly conduct of their annual general meetings. And as companies strive to meet the conditions for this award, It is envisaged that it will promote and sustain investors’ confidence in the management of companies and the capital market as a whole. This is because, invariably, the market is made more transparent as companies seek to satisfy the conditions for selection as winners of the award. There is no gainsaying that companies will readily subject themselves to the rigours of qualifying for the award, seeing that ultimately their satisfaction of the elaborate selection criteria will impact positively on the relationship between management and shareholders, prospective investors, consumer public, etc.

Winners of the award are selected on the basis of a set of criteria made available to all quoted companies and other interest groups like the financial press. These criteria are:
· Satisfaction of statutory requirements
· Compliance with listing and post-listing requirements
· Readability of annual report and accounts
· Comprehensiveness/Innovativeness of annual report and accounts, and
· Financial Performance/Return on Investment
· Conduct of annual general meeting

Award winners are selected from a list of industrial categories drawn from The Nigerian Stock Exchange Official List. Categorisation is informed by the principle of comparing like with like. Since the Award was inaugurated, there has been a growth in the number of categories from which award winners are selected. This has arisen from the growth in the number of companies whose shares are traded on The Nigerian Stock Exchange. As at June 30, 2005, a total of 276 securities were listed on The Exchange, of which 209 are equities. Only companies listed in the Equities Sector are considered for the Presidential Merit Award.

Over the years, The Nigerian Stock Exchange President’s Merit Award ceremony has emerged as a distinguished forum for interaction among stakeholders in the Nigerian capital market. It has been graced by senior government officials who have on a number of occasions used the forum to make policy statements on issues affecting not only the capital market but also the larger economy.