Adrian Tănase, ING: We are waiting for a better price on the stock of the Proprietatea Fund

The profitability of Romanian companies has not yet recovered, but there are great odds of growth in the future, considers Adrian Tănase, the manager of the stock mutual fund "ING Romanian Equity".

On the issue of investing in the "Proprietatea Fund", he said that he would rather wait for the price to stabilize, because he is expecting further significant drops in price.

Adrian Tănase said that the stock is not correctly valued by the market and he is waiting for the listing on a foreign market that would bring the stock closer to the actual value. He thinks however, that even if that were to happen, it would still be hard for the stock to reach the price of 1 leu/share, due to the lack of transparency in the management of some of the companies in the portfolio of the Proprietatea Fund.

He claims that the Romanian stock market is plagued by inefficiency and low liquidity. Adrian Tănase considers that the listings announced for the near future will increase the interest in the market.

ING"s funds have an exposure of just 2% in Romania, whereas in the case of "ING Romanian Equity" exposure reaches 58%, said Mr. Tănase.

Ad van Tiggelen, senior investment specialist at ING, claims that the main threat for investors in Romania is the fragility of the political coalition, and said that he doesn"t expect Romania to join the Eurozone before 2019.

Ad van Tiggelen concluded that foreign investors are always looking for new market to expand to and since the emerging markets such as Brazil, India and China have already been tapped, it is Romania"s turn to attract their attention.