“It is a common goal of the bourse’s council and of the Romanian government to speed up the modernization process of the local capital market… Rasdaq, in my opinion, is a typical case of reactivity, because the European Commission would have issued a warning against us,” said Victor Cionga.
He said the Bucharest stock exchange is working on a medium-term strategy for the capital market.
The Bucharest-based Rasdaq bourse was founded in 1996 as an EU-regulated market. However, after the EU regulations in the field were changed in 2004, Rasdaq could no longer be classified as a spot market.
Considering that the local securities watchdog CNVM has failed to enroll it as an alternative trading system, Rasdaq is currently neither type of market.
Rasdaq provides a trading environment to 1,086 listed companies whose combined capitalization exceeds 9 billion lei (EUR2.07 billion).
Trade volumes have been increasingly lower in the past years, reaching RON218.6 million in 2012, from a peak of RON4.25 billion in 2007.
By comparison, the Bucharest stock exchange’s spot market has 79 listed companies whose total capitalization reaches RON102.3 billion. Trade volumes dropped to RON7.43 billion in 2012, from RON13.8 billion in 2007. (EUR1=RON4.3724)