The amount is comparable to the total investments made by foreign companies last year in Romania, which amounted to EUR1.6 billion.
Pension fund assets have gone from zero to EUR2.4 billion in the past five years, while the stock exchange has remained the same, and the largest pension funds are already investing tens of millions of euros on foreign stock exchanges because they don’t find opportunities on the local market anymore.
“If liquidity stays the same and pension funds don’t have enough volume on the Romanian stock exchange in order to invest these amounts, only 25% of the money allocated for equity will go to the Bucharest stock exchange and the rest will have to be invested on other stock exchanges,” Popescu said.
The current supply on the Bucharest Stock Exchange would allow the funds to invest only EUR400 million over the next five years. The premises of the analysis are that pension funds will buy 10% of the volume of the Bucharest Stock Exchange corresponding to each sector on a steady basis and that funds’ investments in equity will climb from 12% at present to 20% of assets by 2018.
According to Popescu, the only thing that would currently help the Romanian stock exchange take in as much of the money of pension funds as possible is for the state to list any company in its portfolio on the Bucharest order to support market liquidity.
(English version by Daniela Stoican)