Turcu: "No Romanian football club meets the criteria to get listed on the Stock Exchange "

• On the major international markets, investment funds from the Arab world are willing to offer billions to buy certain football clubs

• The fact that Romanian clubs aren"t profitable is the main factor that prevents them from going public

None of the Romanian professional football clubs currently meets the requirements for being listed on the stock exchange, says businessman Vasile Turcu, the owner of the Romconstruct holding and majority shareholder of "FC Dinamo 1948" SA.

Vasile Turcu, who is also the chairman of the Confederation of Industrial Professional Associations "CONPIROM", is one of the supporters of using the stock market to raise funding for football clubs, but he is skeptical that any of the domestic clubs will succeed in doing that in the near future. Vasile Turcu said: "it is very difficult for Romanian clubs Romanian clubs to get listed because they don"t meet several essential requirements, being profitable, for one. In fact, how many football clubs in the Romanian First League do you know that made a profit lately? Let"s assume that a club would get listed on the Bucharest Stock Exchange and it would put up a certain number of shares for sale. Which investors would buy those shares, if they didn"t have the guarantee of turning out a profit within a certain period? I don"t believe that in the near future we will see any football club raising funding from the capital market".

Turcu also says that, because of the crisis, some of the companies that are listed which were extremely attractive for investors aren"t doing so well on the exchange. "What chance does a troubled football club to raise funding from the capital market, when you have profitable companies which have seen trading in their stock drop?", says Turcu. And the statistics of the domestic exchanges concerning the number of daily trades seem to support his statements. In 2010, on the Bucharest Stock Exchange, the average daily turnover was 21.9 million lei, far smaller than the one of its regional competitors.

• Romanian football clubs testing the water of the stock exchange

The idea of using the stock market as a source of financing has become increasingly attractive for the domestic owners of football clubs, once the crisis set in.

Apart from the shareholders of "FC Dinamo 1948" SA, and Marian Iancu, the financial backer of "FC Timişoara SA", the shareholders of "FC Rapid SA", have also stated their intention to take the necessary steps to get listed on the stock market.

One club that has made it its goal to get listed on the stock exchange in the near future is "Poli Timişoara SA".

"We are expecting to get listed on the Bucharest Stock Exchange in March 2011. In the meanwhile we have certain issues to solve", Marian Iancu recently said.

One of the majority shareholders of "FC Rapid SA", Jean Valvis, some time ago said that if the company ever went public, "Rapid could become a Manchester of the Balkans".

The data for 2009 from the Ministry of Public Finance seems to back the claims of Vasile Turcu that football clubs aren"t profitable.

The teams that announced their plans to get listed have the following losses: "FC Dinamo 1948 S.A" - 16.9 million lei, Rapid - 40.3 million lei, and FC Timişoara SA - 31.5 million lei.

Romanian football clubs are badly strapped for cash, and many of the current teams are at risk of failing to meet the licensing requirements for next season.

Dumitru Dragomir, the chairman of the Professional Football League, has repeatedly stated the same thing: "We will see this summer whether we can still go on with 18 clubs in the First League, because 12 teams are in a very difficult position".

Even though football is a true social phenomenon in Romania, under the current economic circumstances, its fans can"t do more to support their favorite clubs than to buy a ticket every now and then.

• Bids of billions of Euros for major European clubs

No less than 50 European football teams, including heavyweights such as FC Barcelona, Real Madrid or Manchester United, are listed on the major international exchanges. In Great Britain, using the stock market to raise funding for clubs is a habit, as 25 clubs used this source of financing. Even Denmark, whose clubs aren"t ranked among the top European clubs - being ranked even lower than the Romanian clubs - has six teams listed on the stock market.

In Spain for instance, the football clubs, which are extremely popular, keep their financial stability with the help of their supporters, the so-called "socios". Benfica Lisabona is the world"s leader in this respect, with 171,000 supporters which are its shareholders, followed by FC Barcelona, with 163,000 fans as shareholders. Recently, Madrid and Manchester United received bids of 1 billion Euros each from the Arab business world. Sheik Mansour bin Zayed al Nahyan, who leads International Petroleum Investment Company of the United Arab Emirates offered 1 billion Euros to buy Real Madrid, while a consortium of companies from the Middle East recently offered to buy Manchester United for a similar amount.