Jean Claude Ngbwa takes over control at CMF

A presidential decree signed on June 29, 2016, appointed Jean Claude Ngbwa to the position of President of the Financial Market Commission (CMF), the regulator of the Douala Stock Exchange (DSX), the stock market in Cameroon. He replaces Théodore Edjangué, who occupied this function for more than 10 years.

The newly appointed president has barely returned to Cameroon, after spending about ten years at the Interafrican Conference of Insurance Markets (CIMA), the policing agency for insurances in central and western Africa whose headquarters are in Libreville, Gabon. Jean Claude Ngbwa was the General Secretary of this regulatory agency until 2015.

Mr Ngbwa becomes president of CMF at a time when the debate on the untimely competition between the two stock markets in the Comic area (Bvmac and DSX) is coming back to the fore. For years now, calls to link up or even merge the two markets and their respective regulators (Cosumaf and CMF) have been made.

But these calls have always met the reluctance of the public authorities, and mainly that of the now former president of CMF, Théodore Edjangué, who turned out to be a fervent defender of the Independence of the Cameroonian financial market.

However, before approaching this question on the relationship between BVMAC and DSX, Jean Claude Ngbwa should, in the short term, manage the case on the arrival of new intermediaries on the Douala stock market.

Indeed, before his appointment, the Cameroonian government sent a bill on for approval by the Parliament, undertakings for collective investments in transferable securities (UCITS).

A new feature that the financial market regulator will have to implement in the coming weeks.