100 million ROL "bill" is out

At a time when NBR has yet to make up its mind about issuing the 1 million ROL bill, some people find the 100 million banknote is not really an exaggeration. It is not a real bill, of course, but a share in one of the most exclusive investment funds in Bucharest: DePfa Romania Money Market Fund, whose shares were worth 113.28 million ROL each at the end of January.
Another sign of exclusivity is the very low number of investors, as there were only six of them by the same date. The six include Daniel Daianu, former Finance minister, Vasile Voloseniuc, former Bancorex chairman in the ’90s and then first vice-president of Banca Franco-Romana (French-Romanian Bank), his son, Catalin Voloseniuc, Razvan Radu, Raiffeisen Bank vice-president and Ioan-Dan Regman. All of them backed by the German DePfa Investment Bank. The fund was launched in June 2002. The idea came from DePfa Asset Management, the brokerage arm of the German bank, which last year thought of launching the first monetary fund aimed at investors looking to put their money into savings instruments traded on the Romanian market. The Romanian financial market is still offering much higher foreign currency yields from speculating the gap between interests and the increase in the ROL/USD and ROL/EUR exchange rates.
The net asset of the fund was worth merely 15bn ROL ($500,000) at the end of January. We say “merely”, because the founders were hoping to raise $5 million in the first year. The reasons for this trend could be the world economy decline, the lack of appetite from foreign investors and, as sources on the capital market say, the too high a fund share price.
The fund is, after all, the quoted sources say, thinking of splitting the 100 million ROL shares, to make them more affordable. The prices of fund shares range between 1,300 ROL and 2 million ROL in Romania at the moment. oana.nuta@zf.ro