The initial public offerings (IPOs) of Flamingo, Transelectrica and, last week, Transgaz - the most important companies to list on the Bucharest Stock Exchange within the last three years, have two things in common: thousands of investors who disbursed hundreds of millions of euros to buy shares, and the same brokerage firm: Raiffeisen Capital & Investment, headed by Dana-Mirela Ionescu.
The Transgaz offering, which ended late last week, proved to be a record breaker and exceeded the most optimistic expectations, with subscriptions worth over 1.5 billion euros from over 10,000 investors, according to preliminary estimates. The value of the offering (65 million euros) looked to be a major challenge for the brokers, but now seems insignificant, given the interest it generated on the market.
Dana-Mirela Ionescu (34), took over the management of Raiffeisen Capital & Investment in mid-2005, after Flamingo's offering ended. The Raiffeisen team had previously been led by Dragos Neacsu, who left the company to become Secretary of State at the Ministry of Finance.
Flamingo's IPO, which also involved ING Securities, managed to attract subscriptions worth around 40 million euros, almost 4 times as high as the value of the shares offered and was one of the first boosts for the Romanian capital market after many years without any companies being listed on the Stock Exchange.
At the time, few believed Ionescu could maintain Raiffeisen's brokerage business among the top ranking brokers, on an increasingly competitive market, particularly since increasingly more banking groups, with a superficial presence on the stock exchange market, had started to see the high potential of this market.
However, the team headed by Dana Ionescu is currently regarded as the best prepared on the market in terms of Stock Exchange listings, and Raiffeisen has maintained its position as leader of the brokers' ranking.
"Unfortunately, if one wants to conduct a public offering on the Romanian Stock Exchange, there is only one team on the market, which can carry an IPO through," says a manager of a local private equity fund, who is examining the possibility of exiting its businesses through a Stock Exchange offering.
Although they are only investing in closed-end companies, private equity companies have stimulated other regional markets, by listing companies on the Stock Exchange in order to exit a deal, as is the situation in Poland, where the Stock Exchange has become the largest in the region.
On the local market, however, no investment fund has so far chosen an IPO as a way to exit a deal.
Dana Ionescu took over the management of Raiffeisen's brokerage division after 8 years in the US, where she attended an MBA programme and worked on Wall Street for investment bank Goldman Sachs and investment fund manager Oaktree Capital.
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