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Of the four companies with large holdings of unclaimed dividends as at December 2008, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) says Nigerian Breweries’ holding is the largest.  Unclaimed dividends are the rewards of investment made in securities of public limited liability companies, paid out by these companies by way of dividends but remain unclaimed by rightful owners 15 months after declaration. 
Nigeria Breweries total amount of unclaimed dividend is put at N4.42 billion, followed by Bank PHB with holdings of unclaimed dividends worth N4.14 billion. The third company on the list is Intercontinental Bank with unclaimed dividend valued at N3.4 billion, and Diamond Bank with unclaimed dividend worth N3.34 billion. 
Contrarily, Law Union led the list of companies with minimal holdings of unclaimed dividends as at the period under review. Law Union’s unclaimed dividend is valued at N6.6 million; followed by Linkage, N5.87 million; Oasis, N3.33 million, and Costain, N159, 188.48. 
From N2.09 billion as at third quarter of 1999, the figure for unclaimed dividend has risen significantly over the years to about N17.9 billion as at December 2008, SEC saying that the figure was obtained from the companies not from their registrars. 
These were disclosed by Bala Usman, acting director, special assistant to the director general, who represented SEC director general, Daisy Ekineh at a capital market seminar organised in Lagos by PriceWaterHouseCoopers. 
According to Usman, SEC’s investigation on the causes of the rising level of unclaimed dividends includes banks minimum deposit requirement that makes small shareholders close their accounts. 
The genesis of the problem of unclaimed dividend according to SEC could be traced to certain positive development in the capital market, such as indigenisation programme in the 70s, and the privatisation exercise undertaken by successive governments in the country.