ZADAR, Oct 27 (Hina) - Croatia needs to reform its financial system, change regulations, and adjust and harmonise the legislation, participants in the tenth annual conference of the Zagreb Stock Exchange said on Friday. The two-day
conference in the central Adriatic port of Zadar has gathered numerous domestic and foreign financial experts, bankers, brokers, and lawyers. It focuses on internationalisation and globalisation, European financial trends, and the open issues and challenges ahead of Croatia's capital market. The head of Privredna banka Zagreb's directorate for securities, Dubravko Stimac, and the chairman of the board at Raiffaisen Bank Austria Ltd. Zagreb, Zdenko Adrovic, pointed to a series of Croatian paradoxes. Stimac wondered why a small market like Croatia's had two stock exchanges, while Adrovic pointed to a discrepancy in interest rates, 6-7 percent for the best compani
ZADAR, Oct 27 (Hina) - Croatia needs to reform its financial system,
change regulations, and adjust and harmonise the legislation,
participants in the tenth annual conference of the Zagreb Stock
Exchange said on Friday.
The two-day conference in the central Adriatic port of Zadar has
gathered numerous domestic and foreign financial experts, bankers,
brokers, and lawyers. It focuses on internationalisation and
globalisation, European financial trends, and the open issues and
challenges ahead of Croatia's capital market.
The head of Privredna banka Zagreb's directorate for securities,
Dubravko Stimac, and the chairman of the board at Raiffaisen Bank
Austria Ltd. Zagreb, Zdenko Adrovic, pointed to a series of
Croatian paradoxes.
Stimac wondered why a small market like Croatia's had two stock
exchanges, while Adrovic pointed to a discrepancy in interest
rates, 6-7 percent for the best companies, but also rising to 20-40
percent. He also pointed to restricting bank regulations, saying
Croatia was one the few countries where clients cannot keep their
money in a bank but at the Money Transfer Service.
Analysing post-trade instruments, Stimac said things in Croatia
could be upgraded to the European level without much investing and
in a short time period. He suggested reducing the quittance cycle,
setting a bank's settlement, and transferring finance ministry and
central bank short-term security registers to a central depository
agency.
The conference also pointed to unadjusted legislation, with
something for instance permitted by one and prohibited by another
law. The foreign exchange operations law was especially
criticised.
The conference also addressed the issue of globalisation and its
influence on the financial market. The former chief secretary at
the federation of European stock exchanges, Jean-Pierre Paelnick,
expects two movement trends, a concentration of the exchanges and
new dealing and competition systems.
Hueseyin Erkan, executive vice president of the Istanbul Stock
Exchange, presented a Southeast Europe Cooperation Initiative
project on a joint dealing platform for the region, a subject in
discussion for two years now. He said this was a decentralised
dealing platform model under which orders from various exchanges
would be directed to the relevant one.
(hina) ha jn