Austria’s Erste Bank has launched a new index covering the largest central and eastern European stocks traded on the Vienna stock exchange.
The New Europe Blue Chip Index focuses exclusively on EU convergence markets in central Europe, excluding Russia and Turkey. It contains 30 stocks at launch. The index will be regularly adjusted, a process Erste Bank CEO Andreas Treichl describes as “very important to investors in such a dynamic region”.
Austrian stocks constitute, at 40%, the largest component at launch. Polish stocks make up 22.8%, Hungarian stocks 19.6% and Czech stocks 11.9%. Also included are stocks from Croatia, Romania and Slovenia. Banks form the largest component by industry segment, at 35.1%, followed by oil and gas (22.6%) and telecoms (18.1%).
IPO flow
The timing of the index’s launch is opportune. Slovakian budget airline SkyEurope Airlines completed a €70.8 million Vienna listing in September. And the same month Polish oil and gas monopoly PGNiG completed a Zl2.7 billion ($840 million) IPO on the Warsaw stock exchange, indicating that a long-awaited regular flow of IPOs might finally be under way.