TALLINN - Kaidi Oone, board member of the Tallinn Stock Exchange, has said that there's been no discernable decline in foreign portfolio investors' interest in Baltic stock exchanges despite the much-discussed exit of Hansabank earlier this year.
On the supply side, he said more and more Baltic companies were showing an interest in acquiring a public listing.
"I cannot forecast the number or time of new listings, but the tendency in recent years has shown that interest in listing on the Tallinn Stock Exchange has been growing among companies," Oone told the Baltic News Service.
Oone declined to say which companies were mulling over a listing. "It can take up to two years from the moment a company makes its decision on listing on the stock exchange to actual quotation," she stressed.
Blue-chip newcomers to the market this year were Starman and Tallinn Water, and speculation is rife that Tallink could soon go public. "We will comment on such issues when the time is ripe for it, when all the processes have come to the required point," Oone said when asked about Tallink.
She stressed that for foreign investors the Tallinn Stock Exchange was not as important as the Baltic market as a whole, thus giving impetus to the three stock exchanges to integrate more closely.
Oone admitted that trade has become the most active on Vilnius' stock exchange, but said that was due to the relatively high number of listed Lithuanian companies 's 49 's which compares to 14 in Tallinn.
