Nicolae Pascu, the chairman of STK Financial, says the strategy of the investment management company will focus especially on closed-end investment funds and not particularly on mutual funds, as he is not confident in a high growth pace of the open-end fund market.
STK chairman considers the mutual funds do not have a well shaped market at the moment, while the slow growth pace he estimates this market will witness over the following years, cannot ensure a more "aggressive" rise for the company he runs.
STK Financial is a company based in Cluj-Napoca that has recently entered the investment management service market, being licenced at the end of last year. Nicolae Pascu, who was the former main analyst at Broker Cluj, is also one of its founders.
The company launched its first private investment fund this April that will be listed on the Bucharest Stock Exchange, with net assets worth 20 million RON (5.7 million euros). The fund, called STK Emergent, was set up by raising private financial resources from approximately 100 investors.
"The mutual fund market is small, and I think the growth rates will be maintained at a low level in the following years. Some players have also done good things on this market lately, as a stronger positive publicity has been noticed, yet I think the amounts of money attracted are still rather small," says Nicolae Pascu.
"At the same time, given the reported amounts, one can not tell how much comes from the retail segment and how much from the institutional investors, as there are no clear statistics in this regard, and the mutual funds are dedicated to retail," added Pascu.
Mutual funds' assets amounted to only 152 million euros in late September. Many of the managers of fund management companies estimated the market would reach 1 billion euros over the upcoming three years, yet Nicolae Pascu says that
