450 SUBSCRIBERS PARTICIPATED IN THE SECOND CAPITAL-BRIDGE FORUM

More than 450 subscribers participated on Wednesday in the Capital-Bridge forum in Bucharest, which was organized for the second time by Moldova's largest bank maib together with the Romanian Stock Exchange. Maib chairman Giorgi Shagidze said in an online conference.

"Moldova has an amazing chance, which happens once in 100 years - integration into the European Union. The experience of other countries shows that on the way of integration, these states developed and rapidly grew their economies, which was facilitated by the growing flow of investments and financial support from the EU," Shagidze stated.

He drew attention to the fact that now Moldova has a small GDP per capita, it is many times less than that of the EU member states.

"In parallel with integration into the EU, the standard of living of Moldovan citizens will increase, approaching the level of European countries. For investors, this means that the return on capital in the Moldovan economy will also increase significantly," the bank's top manager said.

Referring to the terms of maib shares placement on the Bucharest Stock Exchange, he noted that with the presence of the largest Moldovan bank in the listing, the interest of investors, who are interested in investing large funds in other attractive Moldovan assets, will sharply increase.

"Moldova has a great advantage - the possibility to enter the stock market of Romania. This country is sincerely ready to open its capital market for Moldovan companies, which today have no access to capital except for loans in banks," Shagidze emphasized, citing as an example the successful access to the Romanian capital market of the Purcari group of companies.

The banker did not name the terms of IPO placement by the bank, noting that in the presence of the appropriate legislative framework in the country, it takes from nine to twelve months.

He also expressed hope that with the accelerated integration of Moldova into the EU, the national legislation will be harmonized with the EU standards and norms, which will require an increase in the size of the significant share in the capital of Moldovan banks, which is currently 1%.

Answering the INFOTAG correspondent's question how attractive for foreign investors the profitability demonstrated by Moldovan banks in general and maib in particular is, Shagidze informed that several companies well known in the world of finance, which are among the top 10 largest investors, are interested in the bank's assets.

"For obvious reasons, I won't name them, but within the Capital-Bridge forum, we had meetings with representatives of three of these companies," the maib chairman outlined.