4,000 foreigners hold half of the Stock Exchange

Foreign investors have come to control almost half of the shares listed on the Romanian capital market, namely 45%, while Romanian shareholders, including the Romanian state, are still leading in terms of owned capital, according to the data provided by the Romanian Central Depository), an institution that maintains the shareholder registry for companies listed on the capital market. This is the first statistical report on the shareholders of companies listed on the BSE to be published.
Austrian, French and German investors control almost a third of listed stock, with the main interests being the stake of OMV (Austria) in Petrom, SocGen’s stake in BRD, the stake Vimetco (Netherlands) holds in Alro or the stake The Rompetrol Group (Netherlands) holds in Rompetrol Rafinare.
The value of foreign investors’ holdings late last year amounted to 52.5bn RON (14.5bn euros). The stakes were held by around 4,000 investors, according to the Central Depository. The other 55% in the capital of companies listed on the Bucharest Stock Exchange are controlled by over 9 million domestic shareholders. However, most of them, above 8 million, only hold several shares in SIFs, as a result of the mass privatisation programme.
The weight of foreign capital in the stock of listed companies is an indicator of foreign capital involvement at the level of the entire economy, in the context where, though the value of foreign investments over time is known, it is harder to calculate how much of the economy is controlled by foreign capital.
Foreign direct investments in Romania, also including part of acquisitions of listed shares, at the end of 2007 totalled 36.6bn euros.
In recent years, the trend of listed stock has been increasingly influenced by international market developments. The weight of foreign investors in deals has soared constantly in recent years, getting to around half late last year. In the first two months of this year, the weight in deals shrank as a result of the financial market crisis, which reduced the investment flow.
The biggest stakes held by foreign investors are OMV’s majority stake in Petrom and SocGen’s majority stake in BRD.
The value of stakes owned by foreign investors plummeted this year on falling prices and RON decline.