Romanian M&A reached an eight-year high in deal volume with 45 deals, a spike of 41% year- on-year in volume, and a 60% jump in value with a combined deal value of €1.99bn shows a study released by Wolf Theiss and Merger Market. 

The strong performance in 2016 came in spite of the political uncertainty generated by a parliamentary election in December, an indicator of the country’s growth potential, whichever party is in power. In fact, expansionist scal policy has played a central role in accelerating domestic demand, a key growth driver. A value-added tax cut from 24% to 20% in 2016 will be followed by a reduction to 19% in 2017, while there have been three increases in the minimum wage in 18 months.

With closed transactions of 3.5 billion EUR during 2015 and 2016, Romania has been the champion of the Central European region at non-performing loan (NPL) sales portfolios, according to Deloitte’s annual NPL Study. 

The CEE region has experienced an increased interest of NPL investors and a higher bank activity due to improvement of economic conditions, coupled with an increase in provisioning following the AQR exercises in several of the CEE countries. The largest number of completed deal volumes took place in Romania (37%), followed by Hungary (24%), Poland (11%) and Slovenia (9%).

Recolamp, a non-profit organization founded by General Electric, Osram and Philips Romania in 2007, collected and recycled 658 tons of lighting equipment waste in 2016.

Last year, the association represented 187 Romanian producers of whom it took over the legal responsibility on the management of waste from electrical and electronic equipment put on the market - Category 5 - lighting equipment, according to the classification of GEO 5/2015. Thus, on behalf of its participants, Recolamp managed to fulfill legal the collection target of 40% of the average producers' sales in the last 3 years.

The Government decided on Thursday to adopt a memorandum on establishing the Sovereign Development and Investment Fund (FSDI), the Economy Minister Alexandru Petrescu announced. 

"Today, we have adopted a memorandum, according to the 2017-2020 governance programme, taking into account the founding of new public investments, the establishment of the Sovereign Development and Investment Fund being an economy stimulation measure, an investment funding instrument in competitive, profitable and sustainable sectors, with a multiplication effect in economy, going to attract capital and financial market sources," Alexandru Petrescu stated, in a briefing at the Victoria Palace.