The chairman of what?

The remarkable event that everyone has been waiting for at the Bucharest Stock Exchange (BVB) is the election for the new management of the institution, scheduled to take place ten days from now.

So no, it"s not a spectacular new IPO.

It"s not the introduction of some of the long requested facilities like - "short selling", "trading on margin", or "nominee accounts".

None of the above.

Again, the "great" event that the Bucharest Stock Exchange is waiting for is the election of its chairman and of its board.

There are several candidates vying for the presidency - Stere Farmache, Dan Paul, Mircea Botta, which seems certain, but the position might tempt others - most likely Sergiu Ovidiu Mugur Pop, perhaps Siminel Andrei.

The broker community has split into tiny groups with each of them supporting their favorites, but each group is split further between the two exchanges - some support the Sibiu spot exchange, some support its Bucharest sister (the idea of a merger between the two is being thrown around again lately).

A silent war - check.

Candidates - check.

A strategy for helping the market - there is none.

People in the stock market have strange reactions when asked about a strategy: they shake their heads or they look down, they avert their gaze, or they simply shrug their shoulders and avert their gaze. They seem like they know better. Besides, another one of their reactions is going into extremely technical details, using very complicated jargon about operations and knowledge about software.

What exactly do they "know better"?

Ok, I"ll go along with it - "they know something better" - but what exactly?

Undoubtedly, they know their way around the industry, they know each other, they know each other"s pasts and they know who"s dealing what and with whom, and the alliances and enmities in the market.

Yes, they know better.

Except if one look at the state of the market, tells you they don"t have a clue.

When looking at the active accounts on the Bucharest Stock Exchange you get the "amazing" number of 2600...!

I"m at a loss for words.

We still have 14 million shareholders - thanks to the stocks in the FICs distributed years ago instead of dividends.

Around 7 million Romanians continue to keep their shares they received for free in 1996.

These potential investors created by the great privatization have only generated 2600 active accounts on the BSE - that"s 0.02% of the total number of citizens that own stocks.

The savings of the population have exceeded the equivalent of 23 billion Euros.

The turnover of the BSE does not exceed EUR 5 million in a day, which is less than 0.05% of those savings.

This is what "we know better" brings.

No discussion about the technical details of how the Bucharest Stock Exchange operates can get to the real reason that, after 15 years from its inauguration, the Bucharest Stock Exchange has gone so far down the road to nowhere.

The members of the community can"t come up with one idea. There is no hope, And there is no leader.

It"s painful for those whose work revolves around it, that the Bucharest Stock Exchange seems to be a novelty that doesn"t serve any real purpose.

The recent statement of the Minister of Finance only seems to drive this point home even further: "It"s time for the Stock Exchange to show us it serves a purpose".

Indeed.

That is the problem.

The way I know them, I don"t think the players in the industry can come up with a solution.

Because today, the bond and stock market can"t actually provide any of its theoretical benefits.

It doesn"t help companies raise funding. It doesn"t help investors increase their income. It is not attuned to the economy.

It is simply window dressing.

The future of the stock exchange is clouded.