CEE investment opportunities presented to US investors

The ‘CEE Investor Days’ conference took place in New York on May 23-24 and was organized by the Stock Exchanges from Bucharest, Warsaw and Prague in cooperation with independent brokerage firm Wood & Company. During the two days of the event, 34 companies from Poland, Czech Republic and Romania met with 84 institutional investors representing 59 largest US investment houses.

“Wood & Co. was delighted to collaborate on this inaugural, one-of-a-kind event in New York with the Bucharest, Prague and Warsaw Stock Exchanges. It’s so important to the continued development of our region that investment opportunities in Central East Europe be visible to fund managers globally. To that end, we brought companies from Romania, which is a frontier market on the FTSE Russell watchlist for Emerging classification; from the Czech Republic, an EM country with a great balance of growth and stability; and Poland, which was recently upgraded to Developed by FTSE, but continues to offer access to many segments of a dynamic, emerging economy. Feedback from US based investors on the event format has been excellent – we thank our exchange partners for their help in making this a success,” said Kristen Andrasko, Co-Head of Equities Wood & Company.

Representatives of the stock exchanges present at the event stated:

“For the last years, the Romanian capital market undertook a deep reform for improving infrastructure and legislation, and for easing investors’ access to the market and facilitating new corporate IPOs. The permanent dialogue with foreign institutional investors is a priority for us in promoting the investment opportunities and constantly improving ourselves to best standards,” Lucian Anghel, Chairman of the Bucharest Stock Exchange (BVB).

“We are here to meet with US investors to promote our capital market and its advantages. And we have plenty of them. Dynamic development of the Polish economy and attractive valuations of Polish companies, together with the positive rates of return and high dividend rates, represent a good argument for investing on our market. FTSE Russell’s decision to upgrade Poland to the Developed Market status is a proof that Poland is an interesting point on the world’s investment map,” Jacek Fotek, Vicepresident of the Management Board and CFO of the Warsaw Stock Exchange.

“It is a great opportunity for us to present Prague Stock Exchange (PSE) as well-established market with many opportunities for foreign investors. High dividend yield (the highest from OECD countries), experienced members of the exchange and state of the art trading platform (Xetra) is just few of many advantages of PSE,” Petr Koblic, CEO of the Prague Stock Exchange.