The Budapest Stock Exchange’s blue-chip BUX index closed Monday trade down 1.75% to 16,489.31 on fears that Italy could be the next eurozone country to sink into debt crisis.

The BUX lost 293.22 points on a heavy composite exchange turnover of HUF 45.67bn, four-fifths of which resulted from technical cross-trades between an investment fund and the Government Debt Management Agency. The BUX fluctuated in a 1.71% range between an intra-session high of 16,776.97at 9:15 a.m. and an intra-session low at the index’s closing mark of 16,489.31.

BSE blue-chips stood as follows at Monday’s closing bell:

Magyar Telekom lost 2.31% to HUF 508 on a turnover of HUF 6.03bn;

Oil and gas company MOL declined 1.80% to HUF 15,810 on an exchange-high turnover of HUF 15.21bn;

OTP Bank lost 1.74% to HUF 3,170 on a turnover of HUF 12.34bn;

Drug company Richter declined 1.16% to HUF 35,000 on a turnover of HUF 8.71bn.

The BSE Big Four generated 92.6% of the exchange’s composite Monday turnover.

The BSE’s extraordinarily high Monday turnover was due to cross trades between a fund and the Government Debt Management Agency (ÁKK) as the latter redeemed investment fund units from private pension fund assets transferred to the state in the summer for the underlying shares, portfolio.hu said, citing KBC Equitas.

The more than HUF 36bn of transactions added more than HUF 13bn to MOL’s turnover, almost HUF 8bn to the turnover of both OTP Bank and Richter, and HUF 5.5bn to the turnover of Magyar Telekom, portofolio.hu said.