BUCHAREST (Romania), December 7 (SeeNews) – Bucharest stock indices tumbled on Monday, a day after a run-off vote for Romanian president failed to break a months-old political deadlock that has repelled investors, brokers said.
Stock turnover surged five-fold on trading in shares of blue-chip Banca Transilvania.
Results of Sunday's run-off vote for president, based on 99.95% of the ballots counted, gave incumbent Traian Basescu a lead of less than one percent ahead of his Social Democratic opponent Mircea Geoana. Social Democrats said they plan to challenge the results due to alleged fraud.
"The chances that we’ll have a stable government as soon as possible are getting slimmer and slimmer and the bourse, respectively the investors, felt this and were provoked to sell," one broker told SeeNews.
“The current [political] situation could very well bring further fals in stock prices by the end of the year.”
Delays in Romania’s new president taking office will mean a continuation of the political crisis in the country that has prevented the restarting of key reforms in the economy and justice system. Carrying out these reforms is the main condition for the release of the next installments of a 20-billion euro bailout package led by the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
The blue-chip BET index of the Bucharest Stock Exchange, BVB, dropped 4.52% to 4,642.67 points. The BET-FI, which tracks the country’s five regional investment funds SIFs, slumped 5.59% to 24,186.41 points.
The composite BET-C index dipped 3.5% to 2,718.65. The ROTX index of Romania's 15 most liquid stocks, a joint index of the BVB and the Vienna Stock Exchange, closed 3.45% lower at 9,791.65.
Nearly 42.52 million shares of Banca Transilvania, corresponding to a 4.01%stake, changed hands for a combined 102 million lei in five transactions. The parties to the deal were not immediately known. In regular trading the bank’s shares shed 3.15% to 2.15 lei in the session’s third largest turnover of 4.0 million lei.
BVB's turnover soared to 151.9 million lei ($53.2 million/35.8 million euro), including 1.0 million lei worth of bonds, 8.8 million lei worth of fund units and 1.4 million worth of futures, from 29.7 million lei on Friday. The volume of traded shares increased to 106.1 million from 41.5 million on Friday.
SIF 5 Oltenia depreciated by 5.84% to 1.29 lei in the day's largest turnover of 10.6 million lei. SIF 2 Moldova lost 5.65% to 1.17 lei on deals worth a total of 9.6 million lei, Monday’s second highest turnover.
SIF 1 Banat Crisana fell 4.1% to 1.17 lei in deals worth 1.7 million lei, and SIF 3 Transilvania tumbled 6.21% to 0.68 lei in 2.3 million lei turnover.
The other blue-chip bank, BRD, ended 5.0% down to 13.3 lei in deals worth 1.1 million lei. Austria’s Erste ticked down 0.08% to 120 lei in deals worth a total of 1.2 million lei.
Blue-chip oil refinery Rompetrol Rafinare sank 8.64% to 0.055 lei in deals worth 1.2 million lei. Blue-chip oil and gas group OMV Petrom ended 3.79% down at 0.254 lei in 1.1 million lei turnover.
The BET-XT index, which tracks the 25 most liquid companies on the bourse, including the SIFs, ended down 4.38% at 463.84 points. The BET-NG, which includes companies from the energy sector and utilities, declined 4.81% to 573.68 points.
Rasdaq-C, the composite index of the over-the-counter market RASDAQ, edged down 0.17% to 2,224.97. Turnover on the RASDAQ increased to 3.1 million lei from 1.9 million lei on Friday.
(1 euro = 4.2357 Romanian lei)
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