Hungarians join Czech and Poles in the competition with Romanian brokers on the Bucharest Stock Exchange

The leading Hungarian brokerage house Concorde Securities will start operations on the Romanian capital market. Concorde is the first Hungarian brokerage house which enters the Romanian market, joining Czech firm Wood&Co., which started its local operations in 2008, and Polish Ipopema Securities, which came to the market in 2014. This new entry should also bring new investors for the shares listed on the Bucharest Stock Exchange and confirms the higher interest for the local capital market, which is currently one of the most attractive in the region. “Our clients are eager to invest in the Romanian market,” said György Jaksity, Concorde’s co-founder and Chairman of Board (photo left). “The valuations of Romanian stocks are attractive compared to regional peers while many of them offer high dividend yield, which is a value in the current low yield environment. Furthermore, Romania is among the fastest growing European economies. Its growth prospects also remain exceptionally strong thanks to the low indebtedness of the country,” he added. The Bucharest Stock Exchange (BVB) Board of Governors recently approved Concorde Securities as participant at the BVB’s trading system on the regulated spot market. “The membership of Concorde Securities and its direct presence on the Romanian capital market is consistent with the strategy of the Bucharest Stock Exchange to remove the barriers impeding the accessibility to the market by intermediaries and investors. It is also a next step towards the increase of transactional flows‎ into the marketplace of Bucharest, as a future hub for Southern and Eastern Europe,” said Ludwik Sobolewski, CEO of the Bucharest Stock Exchange (photo right). Concorde Securities is a member of the Budapest, Frankfurt and Warsaw stock exchanges. The investment firm was the most active broker on the equity segment of the Budapest Stock Exchange with some EUR 2 billion worth of transactions. The Bucharest Stock Exchange had EUR 3 billion worth of equity transactions in 2014, less than half compared to the Budapest Stock Exchange. In February 2015, the average daily turnover on the Bucharest Stock Exchange was about EUR 7 million, compared to some EUR 30 million in the Hungarian market. The biggest brokers on the Romanian market are Raiffeisen Bank, Swiss Capital and Wood, followed by BCR and BRD. Andrei Chirileasa, andrei@romania-insider.com