LEVEL TWO: The chump, to the Alpha-Male

I've already told you that I think of myself as a chump, because I am easily fooled and I take the Bucharest Stock Exchange seriously and I can't imagine that Ludwik Sobolewski, its Polish CEO, has decided to start making fun of me through official press releases published on its website, in which he claims that he is not part of the staff of the BSE.

The man has created an unprecedented situation: Sobolewski is no longer speaking to the journalists of BURSA, except through "Rights of reply" and through official press releases.

This situation has been going on for some time, but since I am a chump, it took me a while to catch on.

Now, dull-witted as I am, I am beginning to realize that everything began when we started asking him questions about his salary and the other forms of compensation stipulated in his contract with the BSE.

The first time we asked him the question, he gave us an answer, I am reprinting here, with the important part in bold:

"Any attempt to publish [our note: the contract between Sobolewski and the BSE] without attempting to impose a standard in the market, would represent a lack of market culture, which are principles that BURSA and the BSE I am sure aspire to."

Was that a tongue in cheek answer?

If anyone is going to say that it wasn't, then I will feel better too, because I for one took it seriously.

But I could have realized, even back then, that he was making fun of us.

We had asked him to make his contract public, because there are all kinds of rumors making the rounds that the contract between him and the BSE is flawed.

He turned the request into a generalization and he hid behind it, using the "culture" as an excuse not to answer.

But Stere Farmache, with or without that "culture", did make his contract public, on the day the BSE went public.

"Lack of culture" hasn't prevented him from being transparent on that occasion.

Go ahead and make up rules and principles for that kind of disclosures, but, meanwhile, create that culture through a personal example!

That's how I feel now, but back then I was a chump.

The BSE, the CNVM (currently the ASF), as well as the brokers, in short, the whole community of the stock market, have been striving, over the last twenty years, to increase the transparency of the market and for fifteen years now, since the OECD has organized two consecutive round tables, to implement corporate governance principles.

Therefore, the BSE can only think of itself as a true example of transparency, which needs to be followed by the other issuers listed on the BSE.

In other words, he needs to be the first to make the management contract public: "Look, there's nothing to hide".

I was a chump.

I didn't realize it.

After a while I started to figure it out.

We tried again to get him to publish his salary, but this time, we did it by the book, thoroughly.

We sent him a set of detailed questions.

To avoid causing him an unpleasant sensation, and not seem pushy, we asked him to provide us the answers within ten days from having received the questions (March 25th, 2014).

In fact, it wouldn't have taken him more than 15 minutes - all it would have taken was for him to have his contract uploaded on the BSE website.

A request to his subordinates would have been enough.

Those ten days went by.

Sobolewski didn't answer.

It was kind of like in that old nursery rhyme: "The clock rang ten o'clock, and the dark man didn't show".

Meanwhile, BURSA published the "nugget" about the shares bought by Sobolewski, which started a ruckus that left me agape.

The BSE threatened to sue us.

Over nothing.

But, as he was dishing out the threats, Sobolewski had our questions about his contract with the BSE on his desk.

Aha!

So that's what was eating him?

And then an idea went through my head (perhaps the only one I've ever had in my life).

It seems increasingly clear that he is never going to give un an answer on the issue of the contract, it looks like he threatened to sue us, in fact to get us to cower in fear before the "alpha male" (as he likes being called by the press) and to get us to stop asking him about it ever again.

It seems he has terminated the communication with the BURSA newspaper.

But I've noticed that he does respond to our articles.

In an unpleasant manner, but he does answer, through "Rights of reply" and through the official website of the BSE.

We write in the newspaper and he responds through a press release of the BSE.

It's not normal, but it is something.

For me at least, this manner of communication is enough.

And that's where my idea got started, that unique idea I've had in my life.

I will ask Sobolewski the questions, in an open letter, published in the newspaper.

The questions weren't written by me, but by my editorial office (to paraphrase Sobolewski - I am not part of the Editorial Office).

I only had the idea to publish them in an Open Letter, maybe in doing so we are going to get those answers; what else am I going to do, break into his office and rummage through his drawers?!

What the hell, I am not young anymore!

Back in the day, we got the head of security of the Cotroceni palace replaced.

I've become more mellow since then.

I hereinafter publish the Open Letter.