Financial Intermediation Operations and Practice is a useful compendium for financial operators, capital market professionals, and university students. The book will also serve investors, portfolio managers, college professors, and government functionaries in the pursuit of financial knowledge and understanding.

The author, Chief Seye Adetunmbi, who has been a practitioner in the finance and the capital market arena in the last thirty years, has brought a comprehensive experience to bear on shedding additional light and giving historical perspectives of the development of the Nigerian financial system, from inception in the fifties and sixties to where we are in the twenty-first century. Seye went back into the antecedents of the institutions that have transmuted into the big banks, discount houses, brokerage houses, and other players that we have today. He delved into research work on the institutions and players that birthed the modern-day Nigerian financial system.

The book is divided into six comprehensive sections, which include the financial market evolution and structure, market operations and practice, strategies and best practices, financial market derivatives and players, seminar papers, published articles, and research on the financial markets and the Capital Market Roundtable (CMR). There are altogether twenty chapters in the book which cover diverse topics such as the history of the Nigerian financial system, evolution, and growth of development and financial institutions, the establishment and growth of regulatory agencies, the key players in the financial and capital market industry, the indigenization and privatization exercises, guidelines on best practices for the industry and the changing environment in the twenty-first century.

The Reviewer, ‘Tayo Shenbanjo displays a copy of the book slated for presentation on 21st July 2020

Seye took the pains and diligence to go deeper into the growth of the Nigerian financial and capital markets in the early chapters of the book, identifying the constraints faced by the young Nigerian-nation soon after independence. He also identified the efforts made to establish the solid fabric of what we have today. Readers will once again recollect how key institutions like the Central Bank of Nigeria, The Nigerian Stock Exchange, The Securities and Exchange Commission, The Nigerian Industrial Development Bank, and many other institutions came into existence. The author further did a beautiful research on how far the industry has come from infancy into what we are all proud of today. There are charts and other graphic depictions of historical matters and development which students in higher institutions will find very useful as they continue with advanced academic pursuits.

Seye devoted chapters twelve to nineteen to some of his past seminal speeches and presentations dealing with matters that affected our industry then, and maybe still do today. The presentations which cover diverse subject matters like securities merging trading, pension reform, mergers and acquisition and many more clearly depict his dynamic thought-leadership acumen. It is good that from those intellectual submissions, we can glean a piece of the author’s depth and his passion for excellence even at a younger age.

Another interesting portion in the book is chapter twenty, where the author wrote copiously about the Capital Market Roundtable (CMR), an intellectual think-tank arena, convened in August 2008 made up of diverse players in the Financial and Capital Market industry. This on-line roundtable was created by the author, Seye Adetunmbi, with the aim of allowing members to share ideas and conduct intellectual discussions on diverse subject-matters. Since 2008, when it was founded, the CMR has grown from strength to strength in membership and innovative ideas with many of the original participants now occupying executive corner-suites in their chosen endeavors and contributing their quotas to developing talents in the country. For full disclosure, I was one of the original signatories to the CMR charter thereby becoming a pioneer-member of the think-tank.

In summary, I will like to recommend this book to anyone who wishes to learn more about the Nigerian financial system and the evolution of institutions like banks, insurance companies, brokerage firms, asset and portfolio managers and so on. For investors who wish to know how to calculate the value of money and other concepts or learn other topics, like the growth of assets, discounting models and methodologies, the important theory of the time value of other instruments and the determination of yields, this book will help enhance your understanding of these and many other concepts. The book is also good for scholars who wish to do more research and pursue specializations in the academic arena. Seye Adetunmbi, the author, can still carve out many other financial topics for future research and writing, as he delved into so many subject-areas, some of which were not pursued vigorously, due to time and space.

All in all, this is a beautiful exercise in trying to mesh a lot of topics together in one book. As a prolific author of other subject matters, one can only hope that he will do a follow-up with another good book in not too distant future.

‘Tayo Shenbanjo MBA CLU CLTC, the reviewer, is a licensed financial advisor and a compliance practitioner based in the United States.