July 2 (SeeNews) - Romanian share indices on Wednesday closed mostly up after two days of steep falls, while the BET-FI index, which tracks the shares of the country's five regional investment funds, the SIFs, fell on SIF 3 Transilvania weakness, brokers said.
The BET-FI dropped 2.43% to 43,681.10 points, as SIF 3 Transilvania slumped 8.27%, to 1.22 lei in the day’s highest turnover of 4.8 million lei. Earlier on Wednesday local stock market regulator CNVM decided to unblock trading in the bonus shares issued by SIF 3 Transilvania, a year after blocking them due to a legal dispute. The fund said they will start trading on Monday
“Regarding the fall, one reason would be the investors’ expectations that the hike would be cancelled, another reason would be the technical analysis pointing to the correct price. Plus, there are people who were wishing to sell SIF 3 shares, but they couldn’t as the shares were blocked, so they are selling now,” one broker told SeeNews.
In April last year SIF 3 Transilvania decided to double its share capital to 109.2 million lei through a bonus issue of some 546,071,666 new shares with a face value of 0.1 lei each. In June 2007, Cocor company, one of the fund’s minority shareholders, contested the decision before court. At the end of last month the High Court of Cassation rejected Cocor’s claim.
The blue-chip BET index of the Bucharest Stock Exchange, BVB, went up by 0.68% to 6,342.20. The composite BET-C index gained 1.78% to 4,573.13. The ROTX index of Romania's 15 most liquid stocks, a joint index of the BVB and the Vienna Stock Exchange, added 1.24% to 14,591.99.
The BVB launched two new indices on Tuesday. The BET-XT index, which tracks the 25 most liquid blue-chip companies, including the SIFs, shed 0.26% to 698.11 points. The BET-NG, which includes companies from the energy sector and utilities, rose 1.33% to 817.82 points.
“The market gained some ground but it was not impressive. The volumes continue to stay low, so it’s not a big difference if the prices go up or down,” the broker said.
The turnover of the BVB rose slightly to 21.7 million lei ($9.4 million/5.9 million euro) from 20.2 million lei on Tuesday. The number of shares traded rose to 25.5 million from 23.2 million a day earlier.
SIF 2 Moldova shares added 0.53% to 1.88 lei in the second largest turnover of 4.6 million lei. SIF 5 Oltenia ended 1.15% down at 2.57 lei in the third largest turnover of 1.8 million lei.
Blue-chip bank Banca Transilvania ended unchanged at 0.365 lei in 1.4 million lei turnover, while the other blue-chip bank, BRD, fell 0.53% to 18.9 lei in turnover of 891,000 lei.
Blue-chip oil and gas group Petrom closed 4.68% up at 0.47 lei in a turnover of 1.1 million lei. Blue-chip brokerage SSIF Broker lost 4.0% to 0.6 lei on deals worth 844,000 lei.
Rasdaq-C, the composite index of the RASDAQ over-the-counter market, added 0.35% to 4,244.19. Turnover on RASDAQ jumped to 18.5 million lei from 8.8 million lei a day earlier, helped by heavier trading with Giurgiu river port. It closed 150% up to 23.0 lei in a turnover of 12.8 million lei.
Local share indices closed the first half of 2008 with losses that have erased last year’s gains. The BET index lost 34% in the first six months of the year, the BET-C index fell by 30% and BET-FI lost 41%. The Romanian bourse's significant losses earlier in the year so far have tracked international markets where fears of recession in the U.S. have led to instability.
(1 euro = 3.6425 Romanian lei)