At the end of September four Bulgarian management companies control assets worth more than 100 mln leva (511.291 mln euros), Profit.bg found out.

Raiffeissen Asset Management Bulgaria and DSG Asset Management lead the chart with 129 mln leva and 127 mln leva, respectively. Next are Karoll Capital Management and Elana Fund Management with 103 mln and 101 mln leva, respectively.

Capman Capital and Capman Max manage a little over 90 mln leva each, while TBI Asset Management control 72 mln leva.

UBB Asset Management, Standard Asset Management and Status Capital are also in the top 10.

№FundAssets BGN1Raiffeissen Asset Management Bulgaria129,157,9882DSK Asset Management127,782,4623Karoll Capital Management103,673,0884Elana Fund Management101,718,3815Capman Asset Management90,252,4906TBI Asset Management72,160,4597UBB Asset Management50,537,9178BenchMark Asset Management39,579,5449Standard Asset Management34,625,34610Status Capital23,796,052

At the end of September Bulgarian funds managed a total of 882.5 mln leva (451.2 mln euros), versus 724.796 mln leva (370.582 mln euros) at the end of August, and 630.86 mln leva (322.553 mln euros) at the end if July.

According to Severin Vertigov, portfolio manager in BenchMark Asset Management, the main reason for the increase of the assets of the collective investment schemes is the optimism reigning on BSE over the past several months. Also, the recently more active marketing of these funds is informing more and more people of the alternative ways of investing their savings.

Vertigov also said that niche has not yet been filled and management companies will continue to grow in the following 1-2 years.

According to Georgi Biserinski, portfolio manager in KD Securities, the hike in assets is the result of two related factors. First, capital market in the country is prospering, a lot of companies increase their value, which increases the funds' assets as well.

On the other hand, the advances of indices and the records on BSE are attracting the attention of people who have never invested before. These people usually decide to entrust their money to management funds, since they lack investment experience themselves, while they seek high return and safety of investment.