Stere Farmache: In early '90s I did not even imagine I would work on the capital market

How has the Bucharest Stock Exchange turned from an idea and a computer borrowed from the NBR into an arena where 25bn euros' worth of companies are traded? Stere Farmache, BSE chairman and the one whose name has come to be a synonym of the Romanian capital market, speaks about the development of the capital market over the past 15 years: from early '90s, when the BSE management shared its office with the Montreal Bourse deputy chairman and stock trades did not exceed several tens of thousand dollars in value, to the present, when structured products or foreign stocks are traded on the BSE.

A 20bn-euro capitalisation, over 70 listed companies, several tens of thousand investors hoping they will make it one day and another several hundred brokers who will not give in to the financial crisis fallout, this is how the BSE looks today. Still, the figures have 15 years of efforts, dreams, achievements and regrets of some persons who are not necessarily in the spotlight today behind them.
"In the early '90s, I worked with the Finance Ministry and I did not even dream I would work on the capital market. (...)," the BSE chairman says.