* Maybe up to 8 IPOs as markets recover, Basel III kicks in
* IPOs could total 10-12 for CEE stock exchange group
* CEE exchanges to have central clearing house by end-2011
* Merger with Warsaw stock exchange would be ideal
By Walter Brandimarte
NEW YORK, Nov 30 (Reuters) - Five to eight companies could sell stocks in initial public offerings in Austria next year, reviving a market that has been frozen since the 2008 global economic crisis, said Michael Buhl, the CEO of the Vienna stock exchange.
The number of IPOs could reach 12 with potential deals in Hungary, Slovenia and the Czech Republic, whose stock exchanges are part of a group controlled by the Austrians, Buhl forecast.
Capital markets may become more appealing to European companies next year as stricter capital rules for banks make credit more expensive.
"With Basel III (capital rules) coming, which means credit is going to be more expensive and more difficult to get, we can have a revival of capital markets in general in Europe," Buhl told Reuters in a recent interview during Auerbach Grayson's Austrian Investor Conference in New York.
With plans to lead a consolidation of the Central-Eastern European market, Vienna has been acquiring other exchanges in the region but hasn't seen IPOs in its domestic market since 2007.
By contrast, the competing Warsaw stock exchange has based its recent growth on a series of IPOs of privatized companies.
EXPANSION PLANS
Poland and the group led by Austria have become fierce competitors in the Central-Eastern European capital market in the past few years, with Warsaw shunning Vienna as a bidder in an initial privatization attempt of the exchange last year.
This month Poland succeeded in floating shares of its exchange in its own market while keeping state control over it, but Buhl has not lost hope of a deal between the two bourses.
"Our ambition is to consolidate the Central-Eastern European stock exchange landscape. That's not possible without Poland and it's also not possible for the Poles without us," he said.
"So it would be obvious that we actually do some exchange, some cross shareholding, something like that. And at the end come up with one common company."
Meanwhile, Vienna will keep looking into acquiring smaller exchanges in the region. Natural candidates, according to Buhl, would be the exchanges of Croatia, Serbia, Romania, Bulgaria and even the tiny bourses of Macedonia, Montenegro and Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Buhl says most of those exchanges, if acquired by the Austrian group, would remain as separate markets operating on a same platform, the German XETRA system, which will go live in Vienna in Dec. 6.
By the end of 2011 the exchanges controlled by Vienna should also share a central clearing house, which will likely reduce margin requirements, Buhl said.
"If someone buys for 10 million euros in Austria and sells for 10 million euros in Prague, then it's going to be zero margin," he said. "This is going to bring additional money to the market because the money can work and ... not be sitting there as margin." (Editing by James Dalgleish)