Zagreb Stock Exchange announced that the state-owned Financial Agency (Fina), domestic payments services provider, became its shareholder with 10% stake in the company.

On Monday it was announced on ZSE that the state-owned Financial Agency (Fina) has become shareholder of 9.99% of Zagreb Stock Exchange via block transaction in value of HRK 7.6m that took place on 7 November 2019, Friday. The state-owned Financial Agency is in business of providing payment services in domestic payment system, and it also offers offers financial and electronic services. Fina has purchased this shareholding from Eunex C, the company that was acquiring ZSE shares over the course of 2019 and it was assumed that it was looking to take-over majority of shares. According to the media Eunex C has decided to sell its shares due a change in the legislation that stipulates that the threshold for acquiring the shares in the Zagreb Stock Exchange has dropped to 10%.

According to the media Fina has decided to buy shares of the Zagreb Stock Exchange in order to further support development of the domestic capital market. Financial agency purchased the shareholding at HRK 16.5 per share. The share was last time traded on the regular market on 31 October at HRK 15.0 per share. This means that the Croatian state is becoming more actively involved in further evolution of the capital market in Croatia.

Intereuropa SB has on yesterday’s meeting dismissed the current chairman of the MB, appointed current member of MB as interim president and has also appointed new member of MB.

The Supervisory Board of Intereuropa has at yesterday’s meeting dismissed the current Chairman of the Board, Mr. Ernest Gortan. It is according to their statement due to delays in the introduction of an appropriate corporate governance system and an appropriate fraud detection and prevention system. They have also appointed the current Member of the Management Board, Mr. Mark Cegnar, as the interim President of the Management Board with tenure starting on 12 November 2019. Supervisory Board has at the same meeting also appointed a new member of the Management Board, Mr. Matija Vojska. During his appointment to the Management Board of Intereuropa Mr. Vojko’s membership in the Supervisory Board is dormant.

In 9M 2019 the company observed a decrease in revenue of 9% YoY, decrease in EBITDA of 34% and a net profit of RON 6.7m (-18%).

Bucharest Stock Exchange (Bursa de Valori Bucuresti – BVB) published their 9M report and we are bringing you key takes from it. According to the report, operating revenues of BVB in 9M 2019 have amounted to RON 26.5m (-9%YoY).

Such a decrease could partly be attributed to drop in offers on the main market (shares and bonds) for RON 2.2b while total traded value for all markets, including offers, has decreased for 15% YoY. The biggest share in revenues on BVB stand-alone revenue come from trading fees, namely 74%, that decreased due to decrease in offers (-RON 3.2m YoY) which was partially offset by increase in values of transactions on regular market (+0.8m YoY). The revenues related to the post-trading segment increased by 2% YoY (from RON 7.3m to RON 7.4m) as a result of the advance of the revenues from the cross-border settlement services while the revenues related to the registry segment as well as the registry segment – Central Depository (DC) decreased by 16% YoY (from RON 4.2m to RON 3.5m).

It is also noteworthy that in Q3 BVB has published important news that the Global index provider FTSE Russell promoted Romania to Emerging Market from Frontier Market status. The news will take effect from September 2020 and you can read more about it on the following link. This has partly resulted in BET index rally, which continued its growth by 8.6% during the Q3. Another important factor for index growth support was solid performance of the Romanian economy and the strong H1 earnings results posted by the Romanian companies.

The operating expenses were up 4% YoY to RON 22.4m mainly as a result of the advance of other operating expenses (mainly amortization and depreciation of fixed assets expenses). EBITDA has amounted to RON 6.1m (-34% YoY) while EBIT is down 46% YoY as a result of both, decrease of the operating revenues by 9% and the increase of the operating expenses by 4%.

Going further down the P&L, BVB observed a high increase in net financial profit of 42%, amounting to RON 3.9m (compared to RON 2.8m). Such an increase was impacted by increase in unrealized FX gains from financial instruments in foreigncurrency that generated a gain of RON 1.28 mn (vs. RON 0.5m in 9M 2018), but also as a result of the sale of financial assets (government securities) that generated a gain of RON 0.4m.

In 9M, the company observed a decrease in net profit of 18% YoY, amounting to RON 6.7m while 78% was generated by the Group’s trading segment.

BVB Performace (9M 2018 vs 9M 2019) (RON m)