English
In an apparently destructive note, I posted a comment yesterday on the website of the newspaper, where a beautiful debate had begun around the article "Dispassionately about the BSE and its Polish CEO", signed by Doru Nicolaescu, an author which one of or readers, using the nickname "Doubting Thomas", described as follows in the comments to the article:
"Doru Nicolaescu is a sharp mind among our market specialists. He did his own share of compromises to get a decent living, he's jumped the gun, he got burned, he trusted people who betrayed him, he thought that certain people will save him after he became a criminal, he has served as a scapegoat for others and sadly it would seem he has accepted that idea."
I had a deliberately nasty intervention, in the debate which was actually trying to find solutions to helping the BSE exit the slump it is in (it is the debate I have been dreaming about for years, maybe even decades).
I said: "I don't know what you're hoping for.
Sobolewski doesn't matter, Farmache doesn't matter, Anghel... it would be redundant to say he doesn't matter.
The «major listings» don't matter, foreign brokers don't matter, and the state's support for the market doesn't matter either.
You yourselves don't matter and I am saying that in every meaning of the term, including the fact that the BSE market plays no role in the country's life.
I don't know what you're hoping for."
A few minutes later I posted another comment:
"Did I mention that the ASF does not matter, or did that slip my mind?"
Of course, I had foreseen that one way or another, I would be attacked, either myself or the newspaper would, with lines like "Yeah, yeah, same to you!"
I didn't care about it and besides, I've never cared about this kind of lines.
I've cared about something else.
It would have been interesting if any of the comments had asked me: "OK, OK, if none of this matters, then what does?"
But nobody asked me.
This text answers the question that was never asked.
In the case of many of the statements included in yesterday's article by Doru Nicolaescu, I can say "you took the words right out of my mouth".
Here's what he says, before I say it myself:
"I think that the BSE is an aging project, placed in an economy that is not centrally planned, nor is it a market economy, in a hostile environment, and which, in its current form has no perspectives at all."
And:
"A market that has no foundation on the economic local system is not viable and the companies that are not attractive in Bucharest couldn't be attractive in other parts of the world."
And:
"The appointment of a foreign CEO is just the final straw in the process of loss of self respect that the community of the financial market has gone through in the last 6-7 years."
And furthermore:
"The «Romanian» stock market has disappeared: the BSE is becoming a provincial market that can only hope to become integrated in the global market."
I completely agree.
But in the text of Doru Nicolaescu there are also two statements which I reject as false.
The first:
"...the multitude of problems of the Romanian capital market, of which one is the lack of support from the government".
That is not true.
In 1991, prime minister Petre Roman issued Ordinance no. 60 for the creation of the Stock market in Romania.
It is a government gesture.
Sometime in 1992, in the spirit of the Ordinance, the National Bank of Romania built the core of specialists which to form the stock market and for the capital market in general, training them and sending them abroad to acquire knowledge.
This is also when the first draft law for the capital market was drawn up- a very sketchy draft -, which experts from the National Bank and the Academy of Economic Studies worked on.
A loan of 3 billion lei was granted by the National Bank of Romania, in 1993, for the equipment of the future Exchange (as far as I can remember, the loan was repaid in 1996).
In 1993, the first brokerages where authorized by the ANVM, of the Ministry of Finance (Stere Farmache was the head of the ANVM at the time) - this is a gesture of the government.
In 1994, Law no. 52 was issued (the first law of the capital market - which in my opinion was superior to the current version) and the first team of the CNVM was set up, which reauthorized the brokerage firms, based on the new law.
The Stock Exchange that was in the course of being created, at the time had British and Canadian consulting, which the government must have been involved in.
The NBR offered the Bucharest Stock Exchange its offices (which is a conference room today).
In 1995, the inauguration of the BSE (the inauguration in July, not the first real trading session in November) was attended by all the government's top officials and those of the NBR, who wished it all the best.
In the summer of the same year, prime minister Nicolae Văcăroiu signed with the Americans the Memorandum which ensured us USAID consulting for the capital market (the intention was good, but its result was that the we got the hot potato that is still called "Rasdaq" and with the destruction of the mutual fund industry, which is sorely missing today, and the stock exchange needs as badly as people need air).
Also around the same time, the BSE butchered the interpretation of the law, by prohibiting direct trades and requiring the intervention of brokers in any trade (in this manner, it has turned the brokers into "notaries", by putting in their pockets commissions which they absolutely did not deserve - one of the historical causes of the low level of the moral-professional integrity of the market's community).
After ten years, the Government agreed to give the brokers shares in the BSE, for free.
Man, what more could you possibly want to the state?
It gave you the market itself, it lent you money, it gave you office space, it created a huge trading potential through the mass privatization process, and pushed the Romanian average folks to make you rich, allowing you to earn money you didn't work for.
What more do you want from the state?
How much longer are you going to sit there with your hand out?
What have you done?
You traveled to every village to cheat their people out of the shares in exchange for one fourth of the price they were selling for on the stock market?!
Did you front run the naïve foreigners leading them to believe that they have a "stock market" here, on which they could invest?!
You "lent stock" (when the law did not yet allow it) and you did it so many times that you lost track, and in some cases the companies lent out as much as 150% of the shares they actually had?!
You traded based on insider information, either bought from the registrar, either from the depository, or from the exchange itself, until you killed any attempt by the "innocents" to enter the "Temple of Trading"?!
What you did is horrible.
It's horrible to complain that the state doesn't support you.
What do you want - "the major listings"?
To do what?!
Haven't you already had those - the SIFs, banks, Petrom, Dacia, municipal bonds, government bonds?
What did you do with them?!
So the stock market is not working because the government is ignoring you?!
Get serious!
No, folks, you and your actions are the problem.
The second statement (in fact, Doru Nicolaescu puts in quotes, which would mean that he doesn't agree with it either), which I find false is that there is no money in Romania:
"The desire to attract foreign investors (because "there is no money in Romania") has dominated the thought of the majority of everyone who has operated in the financial market over the last 20 years and we have thus lost the competition with those who came here to get the Romanians' money (which allegedly doesn't exist)..."
I think that putting this toxic belief in double quotes is not enough.
I think that this is what actually murdered the Bucharest Stock Exchange and the Romanian capital market, in general.
The claim that there is no willingness to invest in the stock market is false.
It is true that we do not have that many willing to do so, but we do have something.
From what I've been told, the people are saving like crazy, because of the international financial crisis and because they are worried about the financial future of the country.
The savings of the population amount to about 30 billion Euros.
Add to that about 15 billion Euros, in company savings.
That gives us about 45 billion dollars, waiting to be seized, like in Cyprus.
Are those 45 billion Euros money or are they nothing?
Just getting a slice of 5% of that "nothing", in other words "just" around two billion, the BSE would take off, past the Moon, past Jupiter, and on an orbit beyond the solar system.
In reality, after the irresponsible statements of the European Central Bank, that one year from now they will generalize the measures they took in Cyprus, in the entire European Union, all of that 45 billion Euros should have funneled into the BSE.
That is a huge opportunity!
And what do you do?!
You're just sitting there like a boozer in the bush, and complain that the bottle is empty ...
You elect a bookworm as the president of the BSE, which allows you to waste your time on idle fretting.
You're worried about Furnica, Cionga and Sobolewski.
Farmache.
The ASF.
Romgaz.
Transelectrica.
Ponta and Băsescu.
That is why I am telling you "Lasciati ogne speranza..."
You're obese, you're not used to moving around, you are not active, you are incapable of drawing up a strategy, much less implement it.
Any hope is futile.
You don't understand the simplest of things: people, the money is right there, next to you!
Can't you see it?!
Instead of stretching out your hand towards the Government, why not stretch it out to grab it?
You've got some money at the BSE; why not pay for a study to find out who has the money?
Open up your gates!
Study the notion of "market access", for which Morgan Stanley downgraded us and which is the key to any strategy, like I've been saying on every opportunity.
I've been saying for seventeen years.
That's it, I've had enough.
Euro
Dolar SUA
Franc elveţian
Liră sterlină
Gram de aur
