Romanian trader Cristian Sima: International financial crisis may bring advantage to Romania

Luni, 24 martie 2008, 14:12 English | Business

It may be possible that the existing crisis on international stock markets may help Romania, a country that will eventually hop over "this wonder" financially well and become very attractive, Cristian Sima, a former member of the Bucharest Stock Exchange (BVB) board and head of a brokers company said during a BBC-HotNews.ro talk show this past weekend. Sima believes that while the Bucharest Stock Exchange reported a fall last week, it would not mean it was under the influence of the international financial crisis sparked by the fall of the US real estate market.

Sima argued that there was no link between the BVB events and those on international markets as on Wednesday and Thursday last week, when the BVB was reporting losses, the indices of most important markets were growing.

He said that the BVB reported losses because banks withdrew financial support for companies that were losing ground on the stock exchange. But he said the world banking system was in a major crisis and that the Romanian market has been reporting a general fall since August 2007 which from a general perspective was linked to foreign markets - as opposed to the falls of last week.

Still, he said that the Romanian economy had real chances to come out at an advantage following the international crisis starting this year, should the Romanian market prove "not wealthy, but healthy".