Over 28,500 BUA Cement Shareholders Yet To Claim N475m Dividend

About 28,593 shareholders of BUA Cement are yet to claim their dividend, including the earnings accrued in 2021, the company’s document reveals.

The cement maker disclosed this in its list of unclaimed dividends for 2021.

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‘The company wishes to inform its esteemed Shareholders that the Company’s Unclaimed Dividends List has been published,” it said.

In the first quarter of 2022, the company estimated its unclaimed dividend at N474.74m.

With new government legislation, BUA shareholders with six years unclaimed dividends are at risk of temporarily losing their fund to the government.

The Finance Act 2020 signed into law in February 2021 permits the Nigerian government to borrow from unclaimed dividends and dormant bank balances.

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“Any unclaimed dividend of a public limited liability company quoted on the Nigerian Stock Exchange and any unutilized amounts in a dormant bank account maintained in or by a deposit money bank which has remained unclaimed or unutilised for a period of not less than six years from the date of declaring the dividend or domiciling the funds in a bank account shall be transferred immediately to the trust fund,” reads the Act.

The Securities and Exchange Commission is concerned over the growth of unclaimed dividends which has risen to N180bn, the commission’s Director General, Lamido Yuguda, said in April.

Nigerian companies are now easing the process of claiming dividends, but the process is still strenuous some experts argue.

The cement maker said it is working “with all relevant stakeholders to reduce the incidence of Unclaimed Dividends in Nigeria.”

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