Vienna Stock Exchange News

Wiener Börse and Bucharest Stock Exchange launch the Romanian Index

Vienna (March 15, 2005) Cooperation between the Bucharest Stock Exchange and Wiener Börse, which was agreed last December, is now starting to bear fruit: As of today, both stock exchanges will be publishing the Romanian Traded Index (ROTX). The ROTX is calculated on the prices of the most actively traded stocks of the Bucharest Stock Exchange, making it suitable as a benchmark and underlying for standardized derivatives (such as futures and options) or structured products (such as warrants, index certificates and swaps).

“The joint publication of the ROTX is an advance towards closer cooperation between the two stock exchanges and our Exchange international visibility”, explained Stere Farmache, CEO of the Bucharest Stock Exchange. The long-term goal of the two partners is to strengthen the Central European capital market and improve efficiency. “Our cooperation shows how very diverse the cooperation projects among the Central European stock exchanges can be”, said Stefan Zapotocky, Member of the Board of Wiener Börse.

The ROTX is a capitalization-weighted price index, calculated and released in real-time (9.00 a.m. CET to 5 p.m. CET).  The composition of the index is reviewed on a quarterly basis.

The ROTX index, which is constructed according to the same principles as the CECE Index Family, has been calculated back to 1 January 2002 in EUR, USD and ROL (Romanian Lei). This makes it possible to show historical performance of the index, and also allows the comparison with the other CECE indices of Wiener Börse.

The Bucharest Stock Exchange is one of the most advanced emerging stock markets in Central Europe: Market capitalization has increased almost tenfold in the past few years, and hit EUR 8.8 bn at the end of 2004. A total of 60 stocks and 22 bonds were listed on the Bucharest Stock Exchange last year, the total trading volume attained was EUR 669.3 mn. (2003: EUR 273.2 mn.) and the stock indices went up more than 100 per cent. This year a total turnover of about EUR 510.5 mn. was already traded.