BT Securities: BSE commissions are the highest in Europe

Rares Nilas, general manager of BT Securities, the biggest
brokerage firm on the stock segment of the Bucharest Stock Exchange
(BSE), says the Romanian Stock Exchange charges the highest
commissions to brokers, and that this has to do with the market’s
low degree of development. “Reducing commissions, here is the big
problem. The Romanian Stock Exchange is the most expensive market
in Europe in terms of commissions charged to brokers. But this is
quite a hard decision to make – if you cut the costs of brokers,
Stock Exchange may not survive. When brokers are charged a market
commission, which amounts to 50% of the commission charged from
clients, this is a structural problem,” Nilas believes. According
to him, the Stock Exchange’s outdated working system, of using
individual accounts, is not used anywhere else in Europe anymore.
That is why the Stock Exchange has reached its limit as far as
liquidity is concerned, which is in fact very low. Last year the
Stock Exchange’s daily trading amounted to 4.7 million euros. This
compares with a five times higher traded volume, over 25 million
euros, for Erste Bank shares on the Vienna Stock Exchange, compared
with the volume traded on the Bucharest Stock Exchange.