Business Review

Romanian telecommunication company RCS&RDS has announced plans to launch an offer of global depositary receipts (GDR) on the London Stock Exchange. Morgan Stanley and UBS Investment Bank have been appointed by the company as Joint Global Coordinators and Bookrunners.
"The listing will strengthen our profile in Central and Eastern Europe and will provide us with capital for further development of our current business," said Alexandru Oprea, president and CEO of RCS&RDS.

Local software producers Gecad Group through Gecad ePayment and Softwin through BitDefender opened last week their own representative offices in California. The move is expected to bring more clients and increased international recognition.
BitDefender's office is in Silicon Valley and is the second the company has opened in the US, after the one opened in Florida in 2004.

The new president of Ericsson Romania and Moldova, Maurizio De Dominicis, foresees a lot of development potential on the local telecommunication market, especially in landline and multimedia services. In his opinion, new technologies, like WiMAX, which might enter the Romanian market, have a limited chance of success, as the position of the GSM operators is extremely powerful on the local market.

Microsoft must pay the fine it received in 2004 from the European Commission for abuse of its dominant market position, after a European Court decided last week to approve the original sanctions.

Based on the general opinion that internet communication is the future in the development of many industries, TV broadcasters did not want to miss the trend of finding a new type of distribution through the internet. IPTV broadcasting is in its infancy in Romania and does not yet pose a threat to the traditional cable TV operators or the new entrant carriers using DTH satellite TV solutions.

With Romania among the top countries generating IT security attacks, security studies show company personnel represent one of the greatest threats to companies' IT security systems.
The main causes for the external frauds against financial institutions came from the employees of those institutions, their clients and other business partners with whom the employees get in contact.

One of the more controversial projects of the Bucharest city hall, the development of the underground telecommunication infrastructure should generate significant income for the owner and administrator of the network. The city hall will lease the infrastructure network for the next 50 years and is asking for al least 10 percent of the annual income generated by the project. Cable operators have opposed the project vehemently, saying that they could not ensure the quality of their transmission on a network they did not own.

Console video game sales have begun to increase on the Romanian market with the change of targeted users and the creation of new emotional and interactive connections. As the purchasing power of the population increases, so too does the willingness of users to buy original games instead of using pirated copies.

Competition on the local telecommunication market has caused local players to move away from their traditional core businesses and focus more on services that should guarantee them the future development and growth of their client base. This is the case of the cable TV operators as well as of the traditional fixed-line telephony operator, Romtelecom. Niche companies like DCS, which operates Max TV and DTH Television Group, which operates Boom TV, are also fighting along with UPC and RCS&RDS for a piece of this market. Having as many services as possible in the offer will guarantee the long-term success of the operators.

A company can never be too sure of the security of its IT system if an internet connection can be linked to it. Romanian companies are increasingly exposed to IT threats due to the low level of security measures they take and low spending on IT system security. Employee errors, viruses, phishing and hackers are just a few of the biggest threats to a firm's IT system, and the majority of companies do not take proper measures to protect themselves.