Net revenue stood at RON167.7 million, 5.3% lower than in the previous year, ZF has calculated from Finance Ministry data.
The five manage about RON20.6 billion assets, invested in bonds, stocks and other financial instruments to multiply the initial investment of the investors. Therefore, per each RON1 million of assets, the managers made RON1,600 net profit in 2018.
“It has been increasingly difficult for managers to get high yields in the last few years. Interests are very low; they were even negative at some point. The biggest problem, however, is that Romania has few investment options for open-end funds, there’s a low volume on the stock market and even some regulations preventing funds from making certain investments. They don’t have anything to invest in to get very good yields,” economist Aurel Dochia told ZF.
This gap between assets and profit applies to much bigger investment managers than those in Romania, as well. For instance, Black Rock, the largest asset manager in the world, which manages about $6,000 billion, made $4.3 billion net profit in 2018.
The top performer by net profit was Raiffeisen Asset Management, the second largest mutual fund manager in Romania, after Erste AM. It posted RON5.7 million net profit, 26.7% higher than in 2017, while revenue dropped 4% to RON48.1 million.
On the other hand, BRD Asset Management witnessed the worst decline in profitability, 48.2% to RON2.9 million, while revenue shrank 6.9% to RON21.5 million, according to Finance Ministry data.(EUR1=RON4.7182)
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)