Already more than 10-years-old, the stock exchanges of Central Europe's former communist states can only boast a fistful of big companies and are searching for alliance partners to help them find their feet.
When they were formed in the early 1990s, the stock exchanges of Prague, Warsaw, Budapest and other countries in the region were magnets for eager foreign investors.
But the rush ended with the Russian financial crisis of 1998 and the general run from emerging markets. The volumes of transactions, from which the exchanges make their money, has decreased sharply and many listed companies have been forced to close.
Matters improved slightly in 2002 as regional indexes rose in spite of a global financial slump, but this merely put a plaster on the problem and the exchanges are deeply worried about being much too small.
The five biggest stock exchanges of Central Europe - Warsaw, Budapest, Prague, Ljubljana and Bratislava - together are worth less than the Athens stock exchange, which is in turn dwarfed by those of Paris, London and Frankfurt.
Today these fledgling stock exchanges are trying to forge agreements with their bigger, more influential counterparts that will help them to survive and grow as countries in the region prepare to join the European Union.
But as matters stand, the last companies to join the Central European stock exchanges were the big state enterprises that were privatized.
Pavel Hollman, the president of the Prague Stock Exchange, said there was interest among foreign investors, but because they were so small the stock exchanges of the former communist state had little to offer.
"The problem is that there are not enough products for investors. There is a high demand, but we are not able to satisfy it. There are six or seven attractive, well-traded shares," he said.
Erste Bank analyst Henning Esskuchen said each of Central Europe's exchanges had at most a "handful of interesting deals" to offer, notably petroleum companies like Poland's PKN, the Czech Republic's Unipetrol and Hungary's MOL.
"Most of the companies in the region are either not developed enough or have been bought out by foreign groups who went and listed them elsewhere," he said.
Zsolt Horvath, the president of the Budapest Stock Exchange, said: "We have experienced a high number of delistings in the past year. This was partly because stocks were undervalued, and companies then became the targets of takeovers. In several cases successful takeovers resulted in them being delisted from the exchange.
"This is a normal function of the market. But due to the relatively short history of the BSE, we have not seen the continuity of this process - that after a few years these companies appear again and are sold by the financial investors to the public with profits," he said.
In the meantime, the Central European stock exchanges are trapped in a vicious cycle.
"Investors are looking for liquidity. What good is a 100 percent increase in the Romanian market in 2002 to them if they cannot invest there anyway because they cannot find the shares they need?" he said.
Esskuchen said the stock exchanges' quest for growth and greater liquidity made it logical for them to seek partnerships with other European exchanges.
The presidents of the stock exchanges in Prague, Warsaw and Budapest said they were currently not only in negotiations with their counterparts in Frankfurt, London and Paris, but talking to their neighbors in Central Europe about forming a regional alliance.
Mindful of their potential worth, they are taking care not to sell themselves short and be swallowed in the deal.
Horvath argues that the "local markets will continue to have importance in the future."
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