Vlad Pintilie, Deputy CEO, Trading at BT Capital Partners, took part in the MÎRȘANU DEALMAKERS SUMMIT 2025, where he discussed recent trends in the capital market and shared his outlook for 2026:

• A trend that emerged 2–3 years ago has taken hold: recurring bond issuance by two main groups of issuers — first, financial institutions addressing MREL-driven capital needs and, second, state-owned energy companies with projects that require funding and that have turned to bonds as an alternative to capital increases or bank loans.
  
  
• From our standpoint, volumes have increased; this year we were involved in transactions totaling approximately EUR 2 billion. That is an improvement on last year and a step-change versus prior years, when the corporate bond market was largely about smaller listings, especially on the AeRO segment.
  
  
• Many may be surprised that in recent years Romania has suddenly seen billions of euros in bond issuance; of course, this wouldn’t be possible without significant participation from foreign institutional investors, especially since most deals target institutional accounts. What this shows, however, is that none of these investors would deploy capital if they believed bond prices were headed lower.
  
  
• Most view it as a good long-term investment and will likely hold to maturity, even though secondary-market volumes are also meaningful. That’s what this confidence refers to. Most likely, when issuers come back to market, they will price at lower yields, which will make the first investment all the more profitable — while also supporting the local capital market and those companies.
  
  
• Some extremely important aspects relate to this recurrence and the trend shaping up as a type of exercise we can expect to see every year. Issuers want to build a yield and maturity curve and, in that sense, issue at different tenors or, in some cases, in different currencies. The benchmarks are government bonds and comparable companies that issued around the same time. We saw the macro and political turbulence in the first half of the year leave its mark, yet we remain highly attractive as a country in the region whose issuers offer yields above the CEE average.
  
  
• As for sizes, they are naturally tied to development plans — for both state-owned and private companies — as well as to regulatory or capitalization needs.
  
  
• One last project I want to mention is Banca Transilvania’s, where we saw a diversification in the types of instruments issued by financial entities, namely Additional Tier 1 (AT1) — a new type of fixed-income instrument from a Romanian issuer, which attracted very strong interest from institutional investors, primarily foreign.
  
  

What deals are expected on the local capital market in 2026

• We continue to see the market as a very good opportunity for these types of issues, whether on the bond side or in equities.
  
  
• We expect the state to bring several projects to the capital market. From the perspective of entrepreneurial or private companies, there are issuers looking very closely at the Romanian market, and the main draw — beyond, of course, the capital available locally and the market’s capacity to absorb such projects — is the need for expansion, alternative financing and diversifying the liability profile.
  
  
• From this perspective, we expect the market to remain lively next year. We aim to bring new issuers to market — that was one of this year’s features, with a few new names, not just repeat issuance. We already expect issuers who have been in the market for 1–2 years to continue next year, but it’s clear that timing always has to line up on all fronts.
  
  
• I believe the past half-year offered excellent timing in this respect — the equity market was very accommodating — even as events around us could create higher volatility or uncertainty in the period ahead.
  
  
• From this point of view, equity valuations are at all-time highs, while yields on fixed-income instruments, although relatively elevated versus the region, are comparable to what an investor can reasonably expect as a potential return over a 5–6 year horizon. We see these as supportive factors for the investment environment and for issuers’ decisions to come to market at this time.
  
  

ESG‑labelled bond issuance

• From what we have seen, there is a strong tendency to access this type of financing compared with traditional bonds, driven mainly by market demand. There is a slight advantage to this type of funding in terms of dedicated allocations to green bonds or sustainable finance. At the same time, it is very hard to issue a green instrument without being prepared for it — you need governance in place, a more elaborated project and clear targets.
  
  
• It aligns very well with the programme-based structure we have promoted in our advisory to clients — EMTN programmes that provide a longer-term framework, not just a one-off issue.
  
  
• Globally, the focus no longer seems to be necessarily on sustainability. At the same time, it is very difficult to step back once you have set out on this path.
  
  
• Not so much because of the work already done or the projects, but because you have already defined the kind of issuer you want to be, and you have already committed to objectives you need to deliver on. With programmes already established in the market, I am confident that the next issues — a large share of them — will fall into the same category.