Senate Vote for Raising Ownership Cap in SIFs Pushes Romanian Stocks Higher, Boosts Turnover

“The Senate’s decision was definitely the stimulus for today’s gains. Still, the rise is a bit disappointing, it should have been much stronger, but obviously investors do not have enough confidence in the market at the moment and do not have enough money to invest,” one broker told SeeNews.

“In the short term, I think, we can expect further gains in the SIFs.”

Earlier on Wednesday, the upper chamber of Romania's parliament raised to 5.0% from 1.0% the cap on individual shareholding in each of the five regional investment funds, the SIFs. The  cap is designed to safeguard the funds from any single investor gaining control over the SIFs, which hold significant stakes in major companies across all sectors of the Romanian economy. The parliament's lower house will have the final say on the draft legislation regarding the ownership ceiling in the five investment funds.

The BET-FI index, which tracks the SIFs jumped 5.2% to 21,647.21 points. The blue-chip BET index of the Bucharest Stock Exchange, BVB, rose 2.89% to 4,778.27 points.

The composite BET-C index climbed 3.38% to 2,775.58. The ROTX index of Romania's 15 most liquid stocks, a joint index of the BVB and the Vienna Stock Exchange, gained 2.4% to 10,110.72.

BVB's turnover more than doubled to 37.8 million lei ($13.2 million/8.8 million euro) from 16.2 million lei on Tuesday. The number of traded shares increased to 56.7 million from 35.55 million on Tuesday.

SIF 5 Oltenia jumped 5.56% to 1.14 lei in the day's largest turnover of 10.4 million lei. SIF 2 Moldova surged 6.42% to 0.995 lei on deals worth a total of 4.7 million lei, Wednesday’s second largest turnover. Blue-chip bank BRD closed 6.15% higher at 13.8 lei on the regular market in the session’s third largest turnover of 4.0 million lei.

SIF 3 Transilvania rose 4.2% to 0.62 lei in turnover of 3.8 million lei, and SIF 1 Banat Crisana advanced 4.52% to 1.04 lei in deals worth 3.1 million lei.

The other blue-chip lender, Banca Transilvania, added 1.47% to 2.07 lei in 1.35 million lei turnover. Austria’s Erste Bank ended 0.84% up at 132.2 lei in deals worth a total of 1.4 million lei.

Blue-chip oil and gas group OMV Petrom appreciated by 1.95% to 0.262 lei in 2.9 lei turnover. Drug wholesaler Farmaceutica Remedia lost 1.76% to 0.167 lei in deals worth 991,500 lei.
 
The BET-XT index, which tracks the 25 most liquid companies on the bourse, including the SIFs, gained 3.67% to 455.71 points. The BET-NG, which includes companies from the energy sector and utilities, was up 2.66% at 606.96 points.

Rasdaq-C, the composite index of the over-the-counter market RASDAQ, rose 1.16% to 2,251.17. Turnover on the RASDAQ jumped to 1.7 million lei from 373,000 lei on Tuesday.

(1 euro = 4.2961 Romanian lei)