Croatian Financial Services Supervisory Agency welcomes eight-country memorandum to cooperate on Central and South-Eastern European capital market development

The Croatian Financial Services Supervisory Agency (Hanfa) reported that finance ministers and senior officials from Slovenia, Slovakia, Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary, North Macedonia and Croatia signed a Memorandum of Understanding in Zagreb to strengthen cooperation on developing their capital markets, including through closer coordination and potential regulatory alignment to improve liquidity, visibility, efficiency and competitiveness. Hanfa Board President Ante Žigman, who moderated a ministerial panel at the event, said the initiative could involve further harmonisation of regulatory frameworks to help create a larger regional market and improve market-based financing for the economy, and that Hanfa will contribute within its mandate to implementing the agreed objectives. The memorandum builds on a separate end-2024 memorandum signed by the stock exchanges of Bratislava, Bucharest, Budapest, Ljubljana, Skopje, Sofia, Warsaw and Zagreb, with support from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, and is positioned as aligned with the European Union’s Savings and Investment Strategy to channel household savings and private capital into capital markets, including for small and medium-sized enterprises, and to facilitate cross-border capital flows.