The BET-FI index, which tracks Romania's five regional investment funds, SIFs, paced the losses, tumbling by 12.82% to 11,100.85 points. The blue-chip BET index of the Bucharest Stock Exchange, BVB, lost 8.61% to 2,817.06.
The composite BET-C index dropped 8.37% to 2,125.42. The ROTX index of Romania's 15 most liquid stocks, a joint index of the BVB and the Vienna Stock Exchange, slumped by 9.01% to 6,500.94.
“We have no domestic reason for the falls. Practically, there are big falls on all European bourses. There are some very bad financial results in the Asian car production sector and that has brought the [Asian] market down,” one broker told SeeNews.
The BVB suspended trading for about 40 minutes until 1425 local time (1125 GMT) as most of the stocks lost more than 12%. This is the second time this month that the BVB suspends trading for the same reason.
BVB's turnover rose to 26.5 million lei ($9.1 million/7.2 million euro) from 19.4 million lei on Thursday. The number of shares traded on Friday rose to 86.6 million from 71.9 million a day earlier.
Blue-chip bank BRD dropped by 8.07% to 7.4 lei in the day’s highest turnover of 7.6 million lei. SIF 5 Oltenia lost 13.22% to 0.525 lei in the day’s second highest turnover of 4.5 million lei on Friday.SIF 2 Moldova fell by 12.6% to 0.437 lei in the day's third largest turnover of 4.4 million lei.
SIF 3 Transilvania led the falls among the SIFs, plunging by 14.86% to 0.315 lei in deals worth 795,000 lei.
Blue-chip oil and gas group Petrom tumbled by 12.94% to 0.148 lei on 2.5 million lei turnover, while blue-chip oil refinery Rompetrol Rafinare dipped by 15% to 0.0221 lei on deals worth a total of 570,000 lei.
Gas transmission company Transgaz dropped by 14.36% to 111.5 lei in a turnover of 436,000 lei, and power grid operator Transelectrica lost 10.16% to 11.5 lei on deals worth 587,000 lei.
The BET-XT index, which tracks the 25 most liquid blue-chip companies, including the SIFs, sank 8.94% to 264.75 points. The BET-NG, which includes companies from the energy sector and utilities, lost 13.24% to 340.31.
Rasdaq-C, the composite index of the RASDAQ over-the-counter market, dropped by 4.05% to 2,424.20. Turnover on RASDAQ halved to 3.2 million lei on Friday.
The Romanian stock market, along with the rest of the bourses in southeastern Europe, has been losing ground for more than a month now, dragged down by panic selling on international markets following bank collapses in the United States and Europe.
(1 euro = 3.6673 Romanian lei)
