A new attempt to select a CEO for the BSE

According to some market sources, banker Ciprian Păltineanu and Adrian Tănase, Chief Investment Officer at NN Pensii România, will hold interviews in the beginning of next week with the Board of the BSE, after Ludwik Sobolewski's term expired in the summer.

Even though the BSE initially announced an internal selection process, there are rumors that head-hunter George Butunoiu is now in charge of the recruitment process.

The waiting list may include a few foreigners, including former BRD executive Jacek Panczyk, of the Corporate Banking Division.

At the end of October, BURSA wrote that in certain circles, the name of Ciprian Păltineanu, as CEO of the BSE is being discussed intensely. Recently, Adrian Tănase also joined the list, as the BSE seems to have scrapped the first selection, which began in September and in which it had already interviewed Paul Prodan, Andre Cappon and Ludwik Sobolewski, with the last being included by default, without submitting an application.

Ciprian Păltineanu was a head of the major companies division of UniCredit România, and in 2015, the bank had promoted him to the position of managing director and, business manager to the head of CEE Corporate and Investment Banking) of UniCredit/Bank Austria.

Adrian Tănase joined the NN group in 2006 and has over 16 years of experience on the capital market, with a focus on portfolio management.

Both candidates seem to be close to the group of banks that are BSE shareholders, which has dominated the policy of the exchange over the last few years, starting with the election as president of BCR chief economist, Lucian Anghel. Over all these years, independent brokers have battled banks over several issues, one of them being the pricing policy of the BSE. This year, the shareholders of the exchange have approved a new pricing plan, which introduces a flat fee per order of 0.95 lei, along with a cut of the variable fees.

This measure will place additional pressure on independent brokers next year, which will particularly affect the retail segment of the Exchange, the one which normally ensures the liquidity of the capital market.

Besides, this was the only criterion left which we still had to carry out for the BSE to be promoted to the status of emerging market by the FTSE Russel agency. Placed on the watchlist in 2016, the BSE saw no progress in 2017 and it is hard to be believed that it would be successful in 2018, considering it had no CEO for the last three months.

Once the management of the BSE succeeds in reaching an agreement on the new CEO, follows an unspecified period of time needed for his validation by the Financial Overnight Authority.

The board of the Exchange is now complete, after the validation of Radu Hanga, as its ninth member, following a three-month wait for the ASF, a situation similar to what has happened with the management of the SIFs.

If the BSE finds its CEO in December, it is not out of the question, based on previous experiences, that the validation by the ASF would be pushed to March, precisely when FTSE Russel is publishing the first spring assessment.

IF we add to that three months of getting the hang of things, we find that the BSE has already wasted a lot of time, and that because it has insisted on extending the term of Ludwik Sobolewski, with all the pertaining hubbub, instead of taking the right steps from the beginning.