End of coupon age causes brokers to lose their jobs

The sale of shares distributed for free within the Mass Privatisation Programme (PPM) has been quite a profitable business for most of the brokers on the capital market for several years. This year, the mandatory delisting offers have been, as far as some brokers specialised in the take-over of “coupons” are concerned, the last transactions they handled on the capital market.
Active International securities firm has recently decided to close no less than 92 agencies countrywide, so that it now operates only six agencies in Bucharest and two in the provinces. Capital market sources say that its main shareholders, Broadhurst investment fund and Posta Rom=na (the Romanian Post Office) want to sell their interests.
“The agencies have been closed because of the low profitability of the retail activities on the capital market. The respective agencies were practically taking over coupons only,” stated Nicolae Ghergus, chief of operations with the brokerage company. He also specified that this decision would have been made much sooner had it not been for the mandatory tender offers. The mandatory tender offers this year were the last chance minority shareholders had to resort to a broker that would find a buyer for the shares they got within PPM.
All the 92 agencies disbanded were operating within spaces provided by Posta Rom=na, one of the company’s shareholders (49%). The majority stake is held by the Broadhurst fund.
Over the first eight months of this year, the company brokered 404 billion ROL in transactions on RASDAQ and 137 billion ROL in transactions on the Bucharest Stock Exchange.
At present, the top brokerage companies in terms of the value of the transactions carried on the market are those held by banks, which have managed to attract major investors, especially foreign ones. vlad.nicolaescu@zf.ro