“This is a significant investment for us in brokerage and we are directly interested in developing the Romanian capital market. We will uphold the modernization of the capital market and believe Romania has a huge unused potential,” said Bogdan Juravle, the new general manager of Swiss Capital (formerly KBC Securities), who previously supervised the company’s brokerage team.
The market watchdog has also approved the company’s new name, Swiss Capital, which used to be its name before the Belgian company took over.
The exit of the KBC group as a shareholder comes as part of a move by the Belgian group to sell most of its Romanian operations. KBC had bought Swiss Capital in December 2006 from the company’s founder Sorin Apostol.
In early 2007, KBC brought Bogdan Juravle on board, one of the strongest brokers on the Romanian market, who had previously been head of the trading department at ING. After this move, the firm climbed fast in the ranking of brokers, being almost constantly no. 1.
“This is a new path for us, but we will keep the same business profile. We will optimize the mix of institutional and retail clients through the introduction of new products. We will have a new platform for online trading in Bucharest soon and will continue to offer analysis and dedicated services to institutional investors,” Juravle added.
Swiss Capital will now be managed by Bogdan Juravle and Olimpiu Blajut, who replace Sorin Apostol and Belgian-born Charlotte Van Den Abbeele.
Sorin Apostol has taken over as Chairman, with the Board of Directors also including Bogdan Juravle, Mircea Stefan Solovastru and Mariana Magdalena Bergec.
The brokerage company is in the race to intermediate the listing of a 15% stake in Transelectrica on the stock exchange, in consortium with BCR and Intercapital Invest. The winner to be announced in mid-October.
In the first eight months of this year, KBC Securities intermediated transactions worth RON3.9 billion (over EUR900 million) and had a market share of around 25%. (EUR1=RON4.321)
(English version by Daniela Stoican)