"Shame on you, Dinu Patriciu!"

I don"t know if Jean-Pierre Vigroux has learned to speak Romanian in the twenty years since he found Romania and began living here, as a representative of consulting firm "Coopers & Lybrand", but one thing is certain he is not making accurate judgments when it comes to Romania.

Now working for "Mazars" - another consulting firm, which drew up a study for the European Commission intended to evaluate the efficiency of the European directive on the obligation of companies listed on the regulated stock exchange to provide information in a transparent manner - , Mr. Vigroux says: "I do not think that Romania can develop a major stock market in the near future, because it is a matter of mentality. Romanian investors prefer speculating on tangible items, like land or buildings".

Present at the time the statement was made, our reporter said that Mr. Vigroux took the opportunity to acknowledge his limited competence when it comes to the stock market. The problem is however, that his statements were not made in his own living room, and as a result, they were published by the media, which left out the second part of his statement, which caused outraged investors to report them to us: "He called us hicks!".

So, with all due respect to a person we"ve known for a long time, it needs to be said that the fashion of foreign consultants blaming "Romanian mentality" as cause for our resistance to change, has been dead and gone for at least ten years.

I haven"t heard any mention of this "Romanian mentality" since the end of the millennium.

We are now talking about Băsescu and Boc, about politically affiliated businesses, greed and corruption, thievery - whether it"s legally recognized or not, about crooked laws.

So, our mentality has become completely westernized.

Matching the French mentality completely.

The statement that somehow Romanian investors have a special mentality, which causes them to turn to "tangible things", and makes them favor "speculating on land and buildings", is inaccurate.

No, Romanian investors are acting just like any other investors, focusing on those businesses which have the optimal risk reward ratio.

For instance, Mr Vigroux does not take into account the fact that about two years ago, the Romanian real estate market crashed and real estate speculation is history.

Does this mean that the mentality of Romanian investors has changed?!

Because if that were true, then why isn"t the stock market taking off?

We completely agree with Mr. Vigroux that the future of our market is not exactly rosy, in fact, We actually believe he was being gentle when saying it would take us ten years to get a developed capital market (when it comes to us, we"re not confident enough to specify a deadline).

But this is not a matter of mentality.

It"s about something else.

Read some of the issues of BURSA printed 15 years ago and you"ll find out what it"s all about.