THE COSTS OF CORPORATE SECURITIES' ISSUERS IN THE CROATIAN CAPITAL MARKET

The development of the Croatian capital market has been dominantly regulatory determined, with strong infl uence of the Croatian legislation harmonization with the EU acquis. Unlike gradual regulatory changes in many developed countries, Croatia was faced with regulatory convergence in the field of capital market in only several years. The securities’ issuances in the Croatian capital market that result in raising funds are very rare, regardless of the fact that the regulation is adapted to raising funds on the European market. Although the motives of securities’ issuance are multidimensional, this paper analyses the influence of the costs of issuance on issuers’ decisions to raise capital by securities’ issuance. The starting hypothesis is that the costs of securities’ issuance are high. To check whether it is true, the attitudes of shares’ and debt securities’ issuers on direct and indirect costs of securities’ issuance are analysed in this paper. Research results show that the market admission costs as well as the costs of securities’ listing maintenance are higher in Croatia than in the region; the issuers do not regard greater transparency of doing business as an obstacle for securities’ issuance while the regulatory mechanism can and should be targeted to market illiquidity decrease.