More bad news for the Romanian capital market. One month after ING closed down its brokerage activities in Romania, another large player follows suit. UniCredit CAIB Securities, one of the most active brokerage firms on the Bucharest Stock Exchange (BVB), will close down activity in Romania and cease transactions by the end of the year, according to Mediafax.

While the move was regional for ING, so far in UniCredit's case only Romania is affected. UniCredit CAIB Securities is the fourth largest intermediary company on the BVB, with a market share of some 6.6 percent, and some EUR 250 million in trading.

Earlier in June, UniCredit had announced the beginning of integration of the brokerage activity into the corporate investment banking and private banking division of UniCredit Tiriac bank.

The Bucharest Stock Exchange ended 2011 with a total trading volume of EUR 2.3 billion, in 900,000 transactions. So far in 2012, the trading volume reached EUR 1.4 billion, and some 575,000 transactions, according to its statistics. The BVB capitalization currently stays at EUR 20 billion. By comparison, the Warsaw Stock Exchange has a capitalization of some EUR 168 billion.

Corina Chirileasa, corina@romania-insider.com