The biggest 100 companies on the Bucharest Stock Exchange (BSE) concentrate 96% of the total capitalisation of the market. Over 2,300 companies are currently listed on the Bucharest Stock Exchange and RASDAQ, of which more than 500 are trading. The Romanian capital market is among the first in Europe in terms of number of issuers.

The top 100 companies in terms of size, however, concentrate over 95% of the market capitalisation, and they are also the most traded companies on the market.

The value of the top 100 companies exceeded 36 billion euros out of a total of 37.1 billion euros in capitalisation for the two markets at the end of the trading session on Friday.

The top three companies on BSE, Petrom Bucuresti (SNP), BRD and Alro Slatina (ALR), concentrate almost half of the total capitalisation of the market. Alro Slatina climbed to the third position in the last few months, after its capitalisation went up by almost 1.5 billion euros.

The over 1 billion-euro companies were joined this year by Transelectrica Bucuresti (TEL) and Oltchim Ramnicu Valcea (OLT), taking the total to six, up from three at the beginning of the year.

Many of the Top 100 companies in terms of capitalisation benefited from significant rises of their shares in the first half of this year, many of them even doubling in value, while others increased by five or ten times.

The spectacular surges occurred amid an increase in liquidity, as well as a result of the capital increases operated by those companies.

The highest increases occurred on RASDAQ, where 23 companies exceeded 100 million euros in capitalisation, compared with the beginning of the year, when there was only one such company on RASDAQ, namely Asirom.

The over 100 million-euro companies on RASDAQ include many of the market stars of the last few months, such as Dafora Medias (DAFR), with