The Bucharest stock market comes down to the people’s market to draw more investors

The Bucharest Stock Exchange (BVB), Romania’s main stock market operator, opened on Tuesday, October 6, its first-ever financial expo in one of Bucharest’s busiest pedestrian areas, Piata Universitatii (The University Square). The two-day event, called Your Money Expo, aims to bring brokerage houses, asset managers, pension fund managers, and life insurance companies closer to the people, as financial services are still much underdeveloped in Romania. The passers-by will be able to stop at the expo and get information about saving and investing, money management, capital markets, and the spectrum of financial services available to individuals. “About 20,000 individual investors are currently active on the Bucharest Stock Exchange, which is at least five times under this market’s potential, considering the country’s GDP growth and the increasing middle class,” said Ludwik Sobolewski, BVB CEO, in the opening of the event. He aims to draw between 3,000 and 5,000 visitors to interact with exhibitors during this first event organized by the Bucharest Stock Exchange. According to Sobolewski, the low level of financial education in Romania calls for more efforts to help people understand the way financial markets work and learn new ways to use their money more productively than spend it. Ludwik Sobolewski took over as CEO of the Bucharest Stock Exchange in September 2013 after previously managing the Warsaw Stock Exchange, the most developed in the region. So far, his plans to develop the local market following the Polish model haven’t yielded the expected results, as the number of IPOs (initial public offerings) has been low and the number of individual investors has been falling. The number of investor accounts on the Bucharest Stock Exchange went down by almost 20% in the past four years, to 72,000 accounts at the end of June 2015 (down from close to 90,000 accounts in June 2013), despite the Bucharest Stock Exchange’s efforts to make Romanians more aware of the benefits of investing in listed shares. Ludwik Sobolewski’s juggling act at the helm of the Bucharest Stock Exchange. Will he land on his feet? Bucharest Stock Exchange launches new corporate governance code for listed companies The Romanian experiment: Building a capital market from the bottom up editor@romania-insider.com (Photo source: Bursa de Valori Bucuresti on Facebook)