United States and U.K based bond investors are said to have spurned the advances of Nigeria’s embattled Central Bank Governor, Godwin Emefiele who is said to have travelled overseas this week to beg fund managers to return to the Nigerian sovereign bond market.
Emefiele and Deputy Governor Sarah Alade met investors in Los Angeles, Boston, New York and London, two people with knowledge of the talks told Bloomberg.
According to the sources several investors in London told the governor there wasn’t enough liquidity in Nigeria’s foreign-exchange market for them to be comfortable buying naira bonds.
Emefiele was said to have denied their claims that the CBN continued to control the currency’s exchange rate even after its recent 30 percent devaluation against the dollar on June 20.
Emefiele was said to have expressed surprise that investors regarded the black market as a gauge as it was too small to be a true measure of the naira’s value, the people said.
Investors also told him they were concerned that the central bank had lower reserves than its stated figure of $26.4 billion because it may have sold some of the currency on the forwards market.
Emefiele said the currency peg was maintained for so long partly because it took time to convince President Muhammadu Buhari that it was in Nigeria’s interests, the people said.
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