Serbian Blue Chips Close Unchanged, AIK Banka Block Deal Lifts Total Turnover

“To be honest I don’t think anyone knows what will happen this week,” Nikola Tepavcevic, a broker with Confidence brokerage, told SeeNews. “We’ll be happy if it continues to be like today. I believe we won’t see anything like last week's falls.”

The blue-chip BELEX15 index closed unchanged at 1,167.20 on Monday, after slumping 11.05% last week. The index has lost some 50% of its value since the beginning of the year.

The broader BELEXline dropped 0.39% to 2,165.88 following a weekly loss of 8.37% while the joint SRX index of the bourses in Belgrade and Vienna rose by 1.38% to 684.69 points.

Early last week world markets dived into the red, hit by the collapse of Lehman Brothers, the fourth-largest investment bank in the U.S. However, global markets bounced back later in the week after the U.S. authorities rescued ailing insurer AIG with a massive bailout and announced a massive bank rescue plan.

Total BELEX turnover soared to 638 million dinars ($12.2 million/8.3 million euro) from 168 million dinars on Friday. The bulk was generated by a block transaction with shares in blue chip AIK Banka worth some 538 million dinars as 110,830 shares changed hands at 4,850 dinars each.

“It was probably an agreed deal between the shareholders,” Tepavcevic said.

Construction firm Niskogradnja fell 14.93% to 2,850 dinars in 14.98 million dinars of turnover, the highest outside the block trading.

(1 euro = 76.2754 dinars)