Foreigners withdrew 30 million euros more in March than they put into accounts opened with brokers, so that net capital outflows reached a new record high. Capital inflows from non-residents amounted to 34.3 million euros in March, more than three times lower than in February and less than half of the level in January.
Net foreign capital outflows reached 63.17 million euros last year, slightly lower than in the first two months of the year.
Last month witnessed the exit of a legal entity investor for the first time this year. However, 17 other such investors have come into the market, taking the total number of foreign legal entities to have opened accounts with brokers in Romania to 53 since the beginning of the year.
The data includes accounts opened by investors, so that if an investor opens several accounts, it is registered for every single one of them. Foreigners put in 235.6 million euros and withdrew 207.5 million euros from the accounts of the brokers in the first quarter. Three months into last year, net foreign capital inflows had been surpassed by withdrawals, with foreign investors withdrawing 1.7 million euros more than they had spent from their brokerage accounts.
“There is an interest in the Romanian capital market on the behalf of certain foreign institutional investors, which are small and medium-sized investment funds that have inflows, which vary from one month to another, depending on the market conditions. The real inflows from the big investors have yet to come,” says Dana-Mirela Ionescu, chairperson of the Raiffeisen Capital & Investment brokerage company.
“The big investors have not really made their presence felt on the market thus far, this is mainly due to differences in the clearing system and the rules regarding the nominee account (on the capital market, this is the account the broker opens, and customers subsequently become sub-accounts of this account) on our market compared with the developed markets. Once these rules are brought in line with those on the foreign markets, big investment funds will start entering the Romanian stock exchange,” Ionescu added.
Some brokers say that the reluctance of the foreign investors last month was partly caused by the changes in the rules for the maximum stake an investor may hold in a SIF, less than a year from the previous modification.
There were also uncertainties surrounding other major companies on the Bucharest Stock Exchange that compounded the problem, and the delisting issue that in its turn created a strong negative impression of the foreign investment funds.
Sales by non-residents exceeded their purchases last month, for the first time since the beginning of the year. Foreigners sold 85 million euros in March and bought 70.33 million euros” worth.
The non-residents sold mainly the shares registered as “other financial intermediation types” and “other monetary intermediation types”, that is the primarily the SIF and top banks on the Bucharest Stock Exchange.
catalin.ciocan@zf.ro