The Budapest Stock Exchange index, BUX, moved marginally up last week on average volume. The BUX closed on Monday 15 of October at 28,307 points. Meanwhile the Dow Jones Industrial average in the US closed last week at a historical high of 14,164. Mol, the largest Hungarian oil and gas company, traded for the past week above HUF 27,000 and slightly above HUF 28,000. OTP had uneventful trading between the levels of HUF 9,400 and HUF 9,500.

The Financial Times reported that Mol hired Goldman Sachs to advise on its defense against a bid from Austrian rival OMV.
Goldman will join giants UBS and Morgan Stanley in advising Mol, the newspaper said. The European Commission has threatened to take action against Hungary for approving the Lex Mol law, which gives the government power to veto a bid for Mol. JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Deutsche Bank AG are advising OMV, the newspaper said. The final outcome between the battle of Austrian OMV and Hungarian MOL is uncertain, and could last many more months, as well as whether the European Union will actively pursue a change in the new “Lex-Mol.” The outcome is very much unclear so I predict MOL shares will trade around the current levels.

For this week there was news for Richter, the largest pharmaceutical.
Richter announced on Monday Oct 15 that it acquired a 95.78% stake in Pharmafarm, the Romanian retail and wholesale group for EUR13m. The group operates 14 pharmacy units in 3 Romanian counties representing 2.5 percent market share at retail and 7 percent at wholesales business in Romania. Completion of the transaction remains subject to the approval of the Romanian Competition Authority.
Forest Lab and Richter said high doses of its experimental antipsychotic drug did not show statistically significant improvement in a mid-stage trial for the treatment of schizophrenia. However, low doses reached a significant effect. The companies are to continue developing the drug. This is negative news for the shares, however, it is hard to quantify the effect. I expect there will be some negative impact in the trading, especially if there will be a sell-off in the global markets.