How to move your account from broker to broker

By Bosede Olusola-Obasa

Punch Newspaper - Published: Monday, 29 Oct 2007

Having a sense of satisfaction or being firmly in charge of your stocks investment is as important as what you realise from your investments.

If you have been getting a contrary feedback from your stockbroker or finding it difficult to manage him, you have an option to disengage his services and findings show that this is quite an easy process.

Investors do complain about their inability to get on well with their stockbrokers, but what many do not know, perhaps, is that there is a platform to formally switch from their point of dissatisfaction to satisfaction.

Whatever you do, ensure that you can at least vouch for the integrity of your stockbroker as this forms the bedrock of doing business at the stock market.

Recently, an aged female retiree narrated how she had been having difficulty selling a particular stock through her stockbroker.

Since she could not get any reasonable results using the telephone, she had to visit his office on one of the floors of the stock exchange building over every detail in spite of her ailing health.

This scenario is just one of the reasons an investor may want to switch over to another stockbroking firm.

The Chief Operating Officer, Centre Point Investments, Mr. Jire Oyewale, notes that some of the steps necessary for such a change include writing a formal letter that is signed and addressed to the Director-General of the Nigerian Stock Exchange.

The letter will indicate your decision to transfer your account from a resident (current) stockbroking house to a target (new) stockbroking house.

The current Central Securities and Clearing System statement and inter-member transfer form wherein the details of stocks, that is, name of stock and quantity is obtained.

The investor will fill his portion of the inter-member transfer form and sign on investor’s portion.

The form is then taken to the resident stockbroking house for signature and stamp of the managing director and accredited representative of the company.

A fee of N200 is paid to the resident stockbroking house at this point.

The managing director of the target stockbroking house as well as an accredited representative will also sign the inter-member transfer form and affix the company stamp.

When this is done, all the documents will be taken to the stock exchange for processing.

He, however, adds that for a moribund resident house, a letter of indemnity will be done by the target house to notify the exchange on any loss or problems that might arise as a result of the transfer in future.

“It should be noted that a moribund house would not have an accredited representative or/and a managing director. In the past, N100 and N200 are paid to CSCS and NSE respectively to complete the process, but now the payment is debited at the end of the year to the concerned house,” he adds.

While he says that the process for opening a special account with the exchange vide CSCS is distinct from transfer of stock from one stockbroking house to another, Mr. Bimbola Olaniyi, who is Chief Operating Officer, Yuderb Investments and Securities Limited, says opening such special accounts can be another way of operating almost independent of stockbroking houses.

He says, “The beauty of it is that if any house has problem, you are not affected because the stocks are in the custody of the CSCS. You have a choice to sell with any broker.”

He notes that one important point in transferring one’s account is that one cannot do a partial transfer, it has to be entire.

On the whole, investors need to be vigilant and interested in what their stockbrokers are doing to avoid falling into traps such as unauthorised sale of stockholdings, short-changing on sales or purchases made on behalf of their clients or being cajoled to buy ‘bad stocks’ already warehoused to be offloaded and so on.

The following are pieces of advice from an investment summit tagged ‘Wealth for the Wise Seminar’ held in the Ibadan in March:

One of the best parameters for judging good stockbrokers is to rely on referrals from satisfied or dissatisfied clients of such stockbrokers. You can get this from colleagues, friends and family members who do business with such stockbrokers.

Do not use your stockbroker’s address as your contact or collection point when filling a form to buy shares as you will be displaying over-confidence in the stockbroker.

Be informed about prevailing prices when buying or selling your shares.

You should keep records of your stock holdings so that no stockbroker can take undue advantage of your equities.

It is very useful and important to verify your signatures immediately you obtain your share certificates and demobilise them and lodge them in the CSCS depository.

You should insist on getting your CSCS stock position monthly from your stockbroker, as this forms the final authority on your holdings on the NSE.

HOW TO BE A BAD TEACHER

E. Sankaranarayanan Prakash
Department of Physiology
Jawaharlal Institute of Postgraduate Medical Education and Research
Pondicherry, India

Your next lecture is tomorrow; however, you have not planned your lectures in advance or prepared for your classes because you do not feel the need to do so. You have been teaching all of this material for many years, so you believe that you can give your lectures impromptu, without preparation. In fact, you think that impromptu lectures are the only way you can keep your facts straight and include all of the important details
because you have a memory like an elephant, don't you?

You never bother to update or change faded overhead transparencies or correct spelling mistakes in your PowerPoint slides. That is because teachers assess students, but students never assess teachers. So why
bother, who will notice, it is not really worth your time and effort. You strongly believe that providing information is your major responsibility, so write as many notes and include as much information as
possible. You also read straight from your notes so as not to miss anycritical points and load your listeners' brains with lists and lists and lists of facts. You never ever look at their faces or make eye contact to
know if they are listening or even alive. Instead, you turn to face the blackboard, with your back to the students, and speak to and for yourself. This, you believe, is the only way you command all the attention you need. It is critically important that you never ask your students any questions or check to determine whether they have understood the concepts. Why bother? They have been listening to you drone on and on, and, obviously, they must have understood. Certain things must be taken for granted. Furthermore, if a student stands up and asks you a question, you should tell the student, "Your question does not make sense to me," "This is too difficult for you to understand at this level of education," or "Only postgraduates need to know about that." Or, you may respond with the simplest answer "You don't have to know that because we will not ask that question on the exam." However, the best alternative is to fly off on a tangent and give an answer for an entirely different question without stopping for the next 5 minutes since it takes that much time for someone to forget the question s/he just asked. For heavens sake, do not let anybody realize that you do not know the answer. It is way too dangerous. In the rare event that a student suggests that s/he did not understand your response or that you might be wrong, do not ever waste time explaining your answer. How could you be unclear? How could you be wrong? You can not possibly be unclear or wrong.

If you are presenting a lengthy lecture, do not ever include a 5-minute break because time is precious; do not waste a second. Continue talking for as long as you can. Do not stop until you are exhausted and cannot
speak any more.

Never, ever provide a summary of what you have said during your lecture because summaries are the only way that even the most attentive student can faintly register what you have been discussing over the last hour. At the end of a series of lectures, do not obtain feedback from your students because this is the only way you will know how well you have been doing. You know you are an excellent educator. You also believe that teaching is a "feedforward" process and there is no absolutely no need whatsoever for improving your performance with feedback from your students.

Furthermore, students do not provide unbiased reviews of your performance because they are afraid that you'll vent your anger during their oral exam. In the laboratory, it is possible that students demonstrate independent  hinking and improve on something that has been taught and discover something truly interesting. In this situation, the students may have questions about concepts that you may not understand. It is important that you never let this happen! It can be dangerous if students learn beyond what you have been teaching. If this happens, everyone will realize that you are no longer capable of teaching.

If, by chance, your students are interested in alternate sources of information for their study, make it clear that there is nothing beyond the blackboard, the white chalk, the overhead transparency, and the lecture notes you wrote 5 years ago (or earlier when you were a student).   Never suggest alternate sources of information, because this will provide them with an opportunity to cross check what you have taught, and that is quite risky. For example, they may learn and know more than you and your next class may be twice as difficult.

If you have been doing well on all these points, there is no doubt that you will be an outstanding role model for your students. And you will be promoted to the position of professor soon.

Management Consulting

Source  http://www.nyas.org/ebriefreps

A management consultant provides services to companies seeking independent advice, according to Jessica Blumstein, a life science consultant at Capgemini. Blumstein, who holds a PhD in cell biology, works as part of a diverse team of scientists and financial experts, producing tailor-made business strategies for pharmaceutical, medical device, and biotech companies of all sizes. In her dealings with clients, Blumstein works on projects such as reorganizing departments, building sales forces, putting metrics in place to measure output, and finding ways to marry the commercial and scientific aspects of a company. She feels that her degree allows her to relate to clients better and helps her to build trusting relationships with them.

If you plan to try management consulting, you must be interested in learning how a company is run and be comfortable "ramping up quickly on knowledge and skills," says Blumstein. Management consultants meet new people all the time, work in teams, and do a good amount of traveling and working on site. (Blumstein is on site four days a week.) Finally, you must be able to quickly and decisively say something definitive to your client, which can be a challenge for scientists accustomed to long periods of time waiting for results.

Blumstein recommends doing research on Web sites such as Vault.com, a good source for preparing for interview. (You can also see this article from the Science Alliance for more advice.) The important thing is to build a resume that's clear, concise, and focused not on the details of your research, but on your transferable analytical skills and capabilities, Blumstein advises. She also suggests talking to acquaintances in the field and scanning the Web sites of various companies to gain insight into the responsibilities of each position. Ensure that your resume lands in the right hands by attending information and recruitment seminars. Interested scientists should also consider summer internship positions as both a glimpse into a new career and a possible gateway into a particular company or firm.

Lastly, if you are interviewing for a management consultant position, Blumstein strongly recommended that you prepare and practice. In management consulting, there are typically two interviews: a "fit" interview, to see if your skills match the job; and then a case interview, at which you are asked how you would handle a particular problem. "It's to make you uncomfortable but to see you think on your feet," Blumstein said.

Blumstein estimated the starting salary of a management consultant to be $75,000.