PARTNERSHIP WITH HELLENIC EXCHANGES Sibex wants to increase its daily turnover four times

Sibex has great ambitions, following the partnership with the Athens Stock Exchange (Helex Group), and wants to increase its trading volume four times - to approximately 10,000 contracts per day, by mid-2014, compared to an average of 2,400 per day in January, according to Ovidiu Petru, the chairman of the Sibiu Exchange.

"Our goal is to quickly exceed the trading volumes of the last few years", said Ovidiu Petru, yesterday, and he went on to say: "In 2012, the volumes were very high, we had about 300,000 contracts per month. We want to exceed 10,000 contracts per day, by mid-2014".

In the beginning of February, the Sibiu Exchange and the group that controls the Athens Stock Exchange - Hellenic Exchanges Group (Helex) - have signed a cooperation agreement, which will allow Sibex to use the central counterparty services provided by the Greeks.

European regulations require the settlement of derivatives trades to be conducted through authorized counterparties, with a minimum capitalization of at least 7.5 million Euros, but the Romanian stock exchange operators have made no progress in creating a local counterparty.

Ovidiu Petru said: "The partnership (ed. note: with Hellex) provides an immediate and fair solution to the talks on the creation the capitalization of a Romanian counterparty. We are benefiting from the services of a Central Counterparty with a capital of approximately 20 million Euros".

He said that the partnership will have several elements: "One such element will be the trading platform. The ARENA will have a viable, modern and accessible alternative in the Oasis platform. The latter was acquired by the Greeks in 1997 from the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and has been improved since then.

The Greek Stock Exchange has trading volumes that are considerably higher than ours -daily volumes of 100 million Euros on the spot market, and 40,000 contracts per day for derivatives.

Also, the market will be open to new products. The Romanian brokerages will have the ability to promote the Xnet service - which offers access to 17 markets, 2400 stocks, 700 ETFs.

Furthermore, there will be a new platform: The Athens stock exchange - Sibex, on which products from Greece and Cyprus will be accessible together with Romanian products".

Dimitris Karaiskakis, head of operations of Hellenic Exchanges Group, said that the two exchanges have tried to keep the trading costs to a minimum: "There are no additional costs, the participants will have the same costs as before. The two exchanges will bear the communications costs".

According to Ovidiu Petru, the stock market and the brokerage firms can't afford new investments. "We have an agreement to keep the costs at the current levels for 12 months. After that, we will review this aspect", he said.

The representatives of Sibex are expecting the partnership to be functional within approximately two months.

Ovidiu Petru added: "We are in the process of implementing Oasis. The Eltrans platform had lots of drawbacks, and now the trading process will be a lot simpler".

• Karaiskakis: "For the moment, there are no talks about a partnership with the BSE"

When asked whether he has talked to the Bucharest Stock Exchange about a possible partnership, Dimitris Karaiskakis said: "Not at this time. During this time, we have focused on the partnership with Sibex".

Ludwik Sobolewski, the CEO of the Bucharest Stock Exchange, abandoned the derivatives segment, due to the problem of the Central Counterparty.

In an interview recently granted to BURSA, the CEO of the BSE talked about a project to relaunch the derivatives market in Bucharest.

Another Central Counterparty is in the works at the National Bank of Romania, so that the Romanian market could eventually find itself having three central counterparties.

• The Romanian Clearing House, closer than ever to being shut down

Now that the services of the Central Counterparty are being accessed, the Romanian Clearing House is left hanging.

"If we don't reach the capitalization required by the EMIR (ed. note: the regulation concerning the off-exchange derivatives, the central counterparties and the central trade registries), the Romanian Clearing House will be shut down", said Ovidiu Petru.

At the end of January, the shareholders of the Romanian Clearing House have decided not to liquidate the institution, after this proposal had been made by brokerage firm Swiss Capital.

Another obstacle for Sibex could be the very licensing of the Greek Central Counterparty, according to the European regulations.

The CEO of Sibex said that all the positions of the Romanian Clearing House will go to AthexClear. According to him AthexClear is waiting for the authorization by EMIR.

The representatives of Sibex say that this approval will come before the deadline stipulated in the Regulation on the amendment and the making of additions to ASF Regulation no. 3/2013.

They told us that by the time of the authorization of ATHEXClear according to EMIR, SIBEX will continue to operate on the current post-trading infrastructure of the Romanian Clearing House, in compliance with the legislation in effect.