The deal by which the state wants to sell a 9.84% stake in Petrom (SNP), the biggest Romanian company, will be the biggest one sealed so far on the Bucharest Stock Exchange.

The offering, valued at 500m euros, generated a flurry of talks between Bucharest, London, New York and even Moscow, with the most important domestic brokers trying to find partners among the world's biggest investment banks in a bid to get the state's mandate to sell the 5.5 billion shares. No domestic broker can carry out such a sale on its own and this is why it must enter a consortium.

Whereas until two years ago no major foreign investment banker would not get out of bed in the morning for offers of below one billion dollars, now all the large banks are knocking on domestic brokers' doors and have activated all their connections to gain this mandate, which is likely to bring underwriters between 5 and 10m euros, with the sum being now, amid the crisis, enough for any banker.

The mandate will be awarded on the basis of a score where the financial part, an objective criterion, and the technical part, the subjective criterion, will weigh equally. Phones at the highest level, both politically (Government and PDL) and economically, are expected to be continually busy because beyond the fee to be collected, the mandate is a trophy for any investment banker.

The battle will also be fought among domestic law firms, as a legal consultant is needed when the stock sale prospectus is drawn up.

Two weeks before the deadline for bid submission, four powerful consortia have already emerged, which are likely to fight the final battle, with each of them being made up of a foreign bank and a domestic broker.

Morgan Stanley, the world's biggest stock offering underwriter in 2010, teamed up with Raiffeisen Capital&Investments, the domestic brokerage that was involved in