The upcoming European Union accession of the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland may direct part of the foreign investment flow from these countries' capital markets towards the East, where the markets do have great potential (such as Romania), analysts say. Until then, the Bucharest Stock Exchange has welcomed investors even from those countries about to join the EU.
Hundreds of Czech investors, both natural and legal persons, have bought significant stakes in SIF (Financial Investment Company) Banat-Crisana and SIF Transilvania, which are deemed as the best SIFs in terms of asset structure. The Czech investors have thus bought SIF shares worth several million dollars from the Romanian capital market. According to SIF officials, the constant presence of the Czech investors among the Romanian companies' shareholders is rather difficult to explain.
The Financial Investment Companies have many shareholders because, in line with the five companies' statute, no one is allowed to own more than 0.1% in a SIF. Thus, it is likely that many of the investors are in fact just "investment vehicles" for a smaller number of active investors.
Representatives of SIF Banat-Crisana and SIF Transilvania have confirmed the massive presence of Czech investors among the companies' shareholders, but claim they do not know their exact number or the specific size of the stakes they own.
"Czech investors hold hefty stakes in SIF Banat-Crisana and we can only assume, for now, that they are not working together. We do have other foreign investors, but their numbers are rather low. The interest of Czech investors in our shares is rather inexplicable," Ioan Cuzman, president of SIF Banat-Transilvania told Ziarul Financiar.
"We did notice that there are many Czech investors that, together, hold big percentages in SIF Transilvania. We do not know their exact number, but there are at least several tens of Czech shareholders. We don't know why they bought. They may have realised that the stock is greatly undervalued," said Florian Firu, economic manager at SIF Transilvania.
According to the National Securities Commission (CNVM), Czech investors last year bought Romanian shares worth 232 billion ROL ($7.2 million), but sold none. Also, they invested in a single field: "activities auxiliary to financial intermediation," a category matching the Financial Investment Companies' core business. Given last year's prices of SIF shares, the purchases made by the Czechs match the value of a 15% stake in a SIF. According to CNVM's 2003 statistics, Slovenian investors bought SIF stock worth 27.8 billion ROL (0.8 million dollars), whereas the Hungarian investors bought shares worth 1.2 billion ROL ($36,000).
However, the Czech investors were rather picky, so that they have not come to own big stakes in all five SIFs. For instance, Tudor Ciurezu, SIF Oltenia economic manager, claims no Czechs are registered as significant investors in the company. "We do have foreign stockholders, but they do not own significant stakes," Ciurezu stated.
vlad.nicolaescu@zf.ro ; laurentiu.ispir@zf.ro
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