Daniela Secară, CEO of BT Capital Partners, spoke to Ziarul Financiar, highlighting the essential role of the capital market in the development of companies and the economy.

Context:

OMV Petrom, Hidroelectrica, UiPath, Romgaz and Banca Transilvania occupy the top spots in the 2025 edition of the ZF Top 100 Most Valuable Companies in Romania. For the first time in the past 20 years, all five companies at the top of the ranking are publicly listed.

What does it tell us that the five most valuable companies in Romania are all listed?

• The fact that, for the first time in 20 years, the top five companies in the ranking are listed marks the maturation of our capital market and sends a strong message: listing is no longer optional for companies that aspire to leadership in the economy.
  
  
• Access to funding, transparency and corporate governance are becoming decisive factors for top performance, and these go hand in hand with a market that is growing rapidly both quantitatively (the number of investors and amounts invested) and qualitatively (investors’ financial literacy).
  
  
• Valuation at market price, via market capitalization, reflects more than accounting results and, in a perfectly efficient market (which does not exist, however), is also the best way to quantify a company’s future prospects through expectations around the sustainability of its business model, capital discipline and competitive advantages.
  
  

How did we get here?

• Romania’s economy has gone through several distinct cycles. The 2006–2008 period was a credit-fueled boom driven by economic convergence and NATO and EU accession, but the capital market was relatively small and leaders in energy, telecom and banking were mostly unlisted.
  
  
• After the financial crisis, in 2012–2019 Romania entered a phase of steady growth in which listed energy and banking companies gained traction.
  
  
• In 2020–2022, the pandemic accelerated digitalization and brought to the fore companies capable of scaling quickly, especially in technology, some of which came to market during that period, both locally and internationally. A case in point is UiPath, which entered the ranking in 2019 at EUR 6.3 billion and reached an unprecedented EUR 10.5 billion in 2020.
  
  
• Hidroelectrica’s listing in 2023 was a major catalyst: it consolidated the “weight” of listed companies in the ranking and validated the stock exchange as the primary mechanism for valuation and funding for the economy’s champions. In addition, major listings provide a benchmark: the success of large IPOs encourages other companies to follow suit, broadens the investment universe and increases the financial system’s resilience by diversifying funding sources.
  
  

Why do listings matter?

• Listings play three essential roles in the economy’s development. First is access to capital: companies can finance large projects without relying exclusively on debt, optimizing the returns they can achieve on investments.
  
  
• Second is transparency: periodic reporting, stronger corporate governance, investor communication and the adoption of ESG standards increase confidence and internal discipline, which shows up in higher multiples and more robust valuations.
  
  
• Third is liquidity and international visibility: index inclusion and analyst coverage encourage foreign capital inflows, reduce volatility and anchor companies in a global — or at least regional — ecosystem. In practice, this translates into higher market multiples for listed leaders, which pull the ranking higher and raise the barrier to entry for unlisted companies.
  
  
• The threshold for 10th place has risen from roughly EUR 1.2 billion in 2006 to over EUR 3 billion in 2025. This higher bar is a result of economic growth, but it is also fueled by the advantages of listed companies mentioned earlier and the performance standards they set. As these benchmarks become the norm, unlisted companies find it harder to reach similar valuations without the benefits the capital market offers.