Growing interest in shares on the stock exchanges of central and eastern Europe has pushed them to record levels, making them among the best-performing in the world

Growing interest in shares on the stock exchanges of central and eastern Europe has pushed them to record levels, making them among the best-performing in the world. The countries’ EU accession in May, the combination of emerging but increasingly stable markets as well as attractive companies have lured increasing numbers of investors from abroad. The Bratislava Stock Exchange is up 77 per cent since the start of the year, while both Budapest and Tallinn grew 53 per cent. Prague Stock Exchange meanwhile is up 49 per cent, with the PX 50 index last month breaching its base level of 1000 points for the first time in 10 and a half years, the Warsaw Stock Exchange reached a record high of 26,107 points on December 2 and the Tallinn Stock Exchange’s TALSE index is at its highest since the market crash of 1997. "The accession to the European Union put Hungary and other countries in the region in the investor spotlight and this poured fresh capital into the stock market as well. Foreign investors are starting to no longer think in emerging markets but in sectors or even companies," Kornel Szabo Sarkadi, a securities analyst at Raiffeisen Bank in Budapest, told AFP. "But more than EU accession, the outstanding performance of the stock market is due to selective large companies, such as banking firm OTP and oil company Mol, showing huge profits which have caught the imagination of investors," he added. According to Jan Langmayer, head of trading at Prague brokerage Atlantik, foreign investment funds and particularly those from the United States are increasingly interested in Czech stocks.