Valentin Ionescu, BSE: "It is time we went from a stock market of small owners of privatization vouchers to a market of professional investors"

The management of the Bucharest Stock Exchange has announced, that next year it will invest several hundreds of thousands of Euros in the market"s "architecture", consisting mostly of improving the IT systems to allow easier access to the market for foreign brokers and investors. The representatives of the stock exchange did not reveal the exact amount that they will spend on IT systems, saying that they did not approve the Revenue and Expense Budget for next year.

Easing access to the Bucharest Stock Exchange would be one of the moves intended to modernize the BSE and bring it up to par with its peers in the developed countries.

"Next year, upon announcing the financial results for 2010, we will have conference calls with domestic or foreign shareholders. This is what other exchanges do", said Valentin Ionescu.

The managing director of the Bucharest Stock Exchange urged brokers to actively get involved in the development of the market, and to try and attract companies and investors.

"It"s not OK to just sit in your office and wait for the listing of the Proprietatea Fund. It"s time for the BSE to go from a stock market of small owners of mass privatization vouchers to one of professional investors", Ionescu added.

The representatives of the Bucharest Stock Exchange said that a major percentage of investors have left the market over the past two years, amid the economic crisis.

"40% of the investors have left the market between 2008 and 2009, and in 2010, another 30% of the remaining investors left the market in 2010", the representatives of the BSE said yesterday.

Valentin Ionescu explained that the Stock Exchange is doing everything it can to implement as many financial instruments and to attract new issuers. The management of the Bucharest Stock Exchange contacted the representative of the pharmaceuticals maker "AD Pharma", which has just announced that it wants to delist the company from the London Stock Exchange, and security company "BGS".

"We have sent an invitation to discussions over to AD Pharma, in which we have explained that the Romanian market is natural for them. We have not yet received an answer from them. We have also the officials of BGS, we even met them. It is now up to the people at BGS to make a decision", Valentin Ionescu said yesterday.

The managing director of the Bucharest Stock Exchange also announced that the BSE will launch energy derivatives in the second half of 2011, but things are not yet final. The Bucharest Stock Exchange, the Bucharest Settlement House and the Operator of the Romanian Energy Market (OPCOM) signed a memorandum in September for the launch of electricity derivatives.

Alin Barbu, the managing director of the BSE, said that next year the Bucharest Stock Exchange will also launch a new system for the dissemination of data: "In the first part of next year, we intend to launch a new data dissemination system, like the one that Bloomberg or Reuters now have, by which we would provide access to the full market depth, and we expect this to help increase our revenues for this segment by 10-15%. 10-20% of the revenue of major exchanges comes from data dissemination".

BVB is also trying to lay the foundation of a partnership with rating agency "Moody"s" by which the latter would provide ratings for the corporate bonds to be issued by some of the most important domestic companies.