Super-funds showing first signs of cooling down

The biggest mutual funds on the domestic market, holding assets of hundreds of million RON, also called super-funds, have seen their asset growth pace slow down in the past two months, with the flood of domestic and international negative news adding to investors’ feeling of uncertainty. Managers say the market is going back to normal, after the boom of 2009. For the biggest mutual funds, BCR Monetar with 1.35bn RON assets and Raiffeisen Monetar, with 901m RON assets, the past three months have brought a visible growth slowdown, from a monthly rate of over 10% at the start of the year to 2.2%, and 1.4% respectively in June. The two funds were the main growth engines for the industry in 2009, boasting an unprecedented asset advance: from 145m RON to 819m RON in the case of BCR Monetar and from 37.8m RON to 603m RON in the case of Raiffeisen Monetar. Owing to the 2009 trend, the two funds have come to account for almost half of the over 4.6bn RON mutual fund industry, while the other 50 mutual funds share the rest of the market. “The asset growth slowdown has been caused by a complex of factors. On the other hand, there was the unclear fiscal regime with an impact over investors’ behaviour, next come international havoc and the deepening crisis of Romania, as well as the falling saving capacity,” said Mihail Ion, chairman of Raiffeisen Asset Management, managing Raiffeisen Monetar fund.