THE 3RD EDITION OF THE "FINANCING THROUGH THE STOCK MARKET" CONFERENCE / ADRIAN LUPŞAN, CERTINVEST: Trading platforms for SMEs, the solution for financing

Adrian Lupşan, development director at Certinvest, emphasized the need for a market for private bonds, followed by the creation of platforms for the trading of such bonds, following the success examples of other markets, such as Germany, Italy and Spain.

Over the last four years, Germany has developed several regional platforms for the trading of bonds issued by SMEs. According to Lupşan, this year, over 60 German SMEs have issued bonds worth approximately 2.7 billion Euros.

In Italy last year, a platform was launched intended for trading mini-bonds, and after the first three months over 30 such securities were issued, worth approximately 2.2 billion Euros.

By July, in Spain, four SMEs issued bonds with a cumulated amount of 215 million Euros. Adrian Lupşan says that, based on the statistics of the biggest Spanish ratings firm, 22% of the financing of SMEs is achieved through the issuing of private bonds, while the remaining 78% finance themselves through banks.

The development manager of Certinvest considers that, through a market for private bonds, the small and medium institutions in Romania could raise the financing they need as well.

In his opinion, even though the Romanian stock market has grown considerably over in the last few years, there is a need to focus on finding solutions for supporting SMEs.

Adrian Lupşan further said: "Last year we had some nice happenings, and some less pleasant ones as well". The development director of Certinvest mentioned the case of Adeplast, which he described as a failure of the Romanian market, which led to the drop of the investors' confidence in the Romanian stock market.

Adrian Lupşan concluded by saying that the Romanian stock market can finance medium and small enterprises because it has the necessary resources.