At today’s trading at the Nairobi Securities Exchange, we will be closely observing the following share counters:

• British-American Investments - The holding company of British-American Insurance (Kenya), British-American Asset Managers and Britam Insurance Company (Uganda) is today announcing its half-year results for the six months ended June this year. The company made a loss of 1.7 billion shillings for the financial year ended December 2011 down from a profit of 2.9 billion shillings in the same period in 2010 due to the poor performance of its NSE stock portfolios in the latter part of 2011. Since the company’s shares were listed on the NSE through an IPO in September last year at a starting price of KES 9.00 per share , they declined to reach their lowest of KES 3.69 in March this year before climbing again in April to trade between KES 5.00 and KES 6.00 since then.   The share closed yesterday at KES 5.70 after losing 2.56 percent from Tuesday’s price. We will watch the counter in today’s trading to see how it fairs in light of today’s announcement.

• NIC Bank – The bank’s shares declined for a second day losing 4.08 percent to close at KES 35.25 per share from KES 36.75 yesterday. Over the past week and into Tuesday this week, the shares gained a total of 3.59 percent to peak at KES 36.75; their highest price in one year. On the 27^th of this month, NIC will carry out Kenya’s second largest rights issue Read more about the rights issue here and find a detailed breakdown of the rights issue here. We will continue to monitor the counter as the rights issue nears.

• Scangroup – Shares in the marketing conglomerate closed at their highest price of this year on Monday at KES 55.50 before falling to KES 53.50 on Tuesday. The share now looks to be climbing towards Monday’s high once again, having gained 1.87 percent yesterday to close at KES 54.50. We will observe the counter in today’s trading to see how it fairs.