US brokerage giant Interactive Brokers adds Bucharest Stock Exchange companies on its platform

Interactive Brokers, the American brokerage giant with more than 5 million clients, USD 775 billion in assets, and more than 4 million trades processed daily across 170 markets, has added shares listed on the Bucharest Stock Exchange to its platform, including Banca Transilvania, OMV Petrom, Romgaz, and Hidroelectrica.

Until now, a non-resident investor had to go through the bureaucracy of opening an account with a local broker. As such, few foreign investors placed their funds in Romanian companies. With the Interactive Brokers' addition, investors can buy Romanian shares directly from the same application used to trade Apple or Nvidia. 

A similar decision was initially taken by NAGA, a broker that started in Romania and was listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange through a reverse merger. NAGA was the first international broker to offer direct access to the Romanian market at the beginning of 2025, but its scale is much smaller.

Only 22 Romanian companies appear in the Interactive Brokers "Market Screener," but all issuers on the BVB main market and some companies on the secondary AeRO market can be found. Funding the account in RON appears on the platform, but is not yet possible. The first orders have already been executed, although they were not of significant value, according to Termene.ro.

International investors can also gain exposure to seven of the nine ETFs listed on the local stock exchange, which are currently available only to professional clients. The two exceptions are the Globinvest Energy & Financials ETF Open-End Investment Fund and the BET BRK ETF Open-End Investment Fund.

The cost structure applied by Interactive Brokers for the Romanian market includes a variable trading commission of 0.28% of the order value, with a minimum threshold set at RON 10 and no maximum cap. In addition, there is an annual custody fee of 0.1% of the value of positions held in RON, calculated daily and directed to third-party entities responsible for settlement and custody.

The Bucharest Stock Exchange is currently seeing spectacular growth. According to an analysis by Croatian fund manager InterCapital ETF, the BET-TR index, which also includes reinvested dividends, delivered a total return of 758% in euros over the past decade.

The figure exceeds the returns delivered over the same period by markets such as Slovenia, Taiwan or even the US NASDAQ 100 index. Moreover, since the beginning of 2026, the BVB has ranked as the best-performing stock exchange in Europe, with a gain of almost 50% including dividends. 

radu@romania-insider.com

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