Fiscal incentives for the companies listed, daily traded value of $20 million, market capitalisation of up to 40% of GDP. These are the goals of the first Development Strategy for the Romanian Stock Market, devised by the Bucharest Stock Exchange and by RASDAQ. There is one thing, though, namely how realistic these plans are.
The document was presented to brokers by the representatives of the two markets at the end of last week during the first edition of the Capital Market Forum. “The fiscal incentives we hope to get concern the amounts raised by companies through IPOs run on the Stock Exchange,” Sergiu Oprescu, BSE chairman explained. Companies use IPOs to go public. The strategy was devised after two months of talks between the representatives of the two markets, following the official announcement of the merger plan. The brokers attending the forum and representing half of the securities firms in Romania were rather sceptical about the strategy being realistic.
“The goals are hard to attain,” says Emil Ogica, Intercapital Invest brokerage firm chairman. The strategy entails, among others, attaining a technical traded value of $15-$20 million and a market capitalisation to account for 30%-40% of GDP by 2007. At present, the average daily traded value is of about $1 million, while the capitalisation of the two stock markets in Romania accounts for only 10% of GDP, i.e. $4.5bn.
The representatives of the two markets have failed to reach an agreement on all the aspects of the document, though, considering the comments of RASDAQ’s chairman, Siminel Andrei, who brings up its too vague nature. “We should only focus on main directions and have precise deadlines for attaining our goals and our shareholders, the brokers, should calls us to account in case we fail to achieve what we set out to,” he said.
The strategy also pursues increasing the number of investors on the market nine times. There are about 60,000 investors at the moment (hardly accumulated in the eight years since the reopening of the Stock Exchange), and the officials of the two markets hope to see 500,000 investors by 2007.
vlad.nicolaescu@zf.ro