"On February 15, 2006 Wiener Boerse launched the South-Eastern Europe Traded Index (SETX). The SETX is a capitalization-weighted price index consisting of 15 blue chip stocks traded on stock exchanges in the region of South-Eastern Europe and is calculated in EUR as well as in USD and disseminated in real-time by Wiener Boerse," read a statement issued by the Vienna Stock Exchange on its web site.
Currently the SETX includes stocks listed in Bucharest, Ljubljana, Zagreb and Sofia.
The SETX is designed as a tradable index. The start level of SETX was set at 1,000 points on January 3, 2005, the Vienna Stock Exchange reported.
Croatian companies with blue chip stocks included in the index are the pharmaceutical company PLIVA which makes up 14 percent of the calculation of the index, the food-processing company Podravka with a share of 2.37 percent in the index and Ericsson Nikola Tesla with a 2.32-percent share.
The Vienna Stock Exchange says that the purpose of launching the SETX index is to show growing importance of capital markets of southeastern European countries that are candidates for European Union membership. Slovenia joined the EU in 2004.
The market capitalisation value in Croatia, Slovenia, Romania and Bulgaria rose from 12 to 36 billion euros last year, with a great potential for a further rise. The 14 companies covered by the said index had the market capitalisation value of almost eight billion euros