Lord Sima begins, Lord Ancuţa leaves, Lord Farmache remains in place

• THE REVOLUTION OF SIBEX

The president of Sibex has been replaced.

Cristian Sima comes.

Teodor Ancuţa leaves.

It was a battle, the only one that Teodor Ancuţa lost in his 17 years as president of the Sibiu exchange, which he has founded and led from one victory to another.

Perhaps this is a victory for Sibex too: Teodor Ancuţa helped it grow enough to make it attractive, laid the foundation for it to be taken to the next level. Teodor Ancuţa had announced that he would step down and that he would be happy if Sibex remained in good hands, allowing it to grow, and even went as far as saying that he would vote for Sima as president.

And yet, on Friday, at the General Shareholder Meeting, he fought fiercely against Cristian Sima.

Why?!

One explanation could be the character of Teodor Ancuţa: he is a man - he steps down when he wants to, not when someone else wants him to.

Another explanation would be the character of Cristian Sima: when he wants something, he will do anything to get it.

On Friday, at the General Shareholder Meeting of Bucharest, one broker commented sarcastically: "Will Sima need more than two months to bury Sibex?"

Knowing how ambitious the man is, I replied: "No, he will only need three days and that"s only because we"re entering the weekend".

Sima has a plan for Sibex - the extension of the trading session, to have it overlap with the New York schedule. Brokerage firm WBS, where he was a chairman, a position which he resigned from Sibex to run for the presidency of Sibex, trades the Dow Jones index, and a longer trading session would allow it to increase its number of trades, including those of Sibex.

This may not be the only idea that the new team will bring to the table, as it will still need the support of Teodor Ancuţa, to mobilize the staff of the Exchange, to accomplish it.

And Teodor Ancuţa had a very honorable behavior after his predictable defeat: he congratulated Sima and expressed his willingness for working together, just like the new president of Sibex acknowledged the merits of Ancuţa in his statements - both parties acted in a civilized manner, laying the groundwork for the a resumption of their previous cooperation, which was interrupted by the fight for leadership.

Assuming that the newly elected president Cristian Sima is a speculator par excellence, and that the new members of the board of Sibex resemble him, it could be expected that the entire team has set a goal for itself to increase the value of the Sibiu Exchange at an accelerated rate, and then within about a year make an exit at a profit. The scenario relies on the interest shown by the SIFs in Sibex, the rumors about new listings on the Sibiu spot market and the optimism of the possible listing of Romgaz and of other energy companies in Sibiu (since the Minister of Energy comes from the city of Sibiu and has the support of several businessmen of Sibiu).

Aside from real details, the abovementioned scenario relies heavily on deductive reasoning...

• THE APATHY OF THE BSE

Unlike in Sibiu, where, by 16:00, they hadn"t even succeeded in establishing how many votes each shareholder had or the names of the Meeting"s secretaries, (based on the idea that it"s not who votes, but rather who"s counting the votes that matters), the General Shareholder Meeting of Sibiu went as expected, following the daily agenda without any deviation.

The much desired "revolution" which would have entailed the replacement of the Board (based on the request to allow the use of cumulative vote made by the holders of about 35% of the shares of the BSE) no longer caused any commotion in the room, because the "revolutionaries" were demoralized by the fact that the request was rejected due to flaws in the way it was formulated (flaws which were real, anyway).

Paradoxically, the word "revocation" which had not been uttered by any of the people unhappy with the current Board, was eventually spoken by Doru Nicolaescu, who was considered as a supporter of president Stere Farmache. He explicitly acknowledged the unhappiness of some of the shareholders, he concluded that there were doubts over the legitimacy of the management of the BSE and has proposed the postponement of the confirmation of Grzegorz Konieczny, until the General Shareholder Meeting of June, when the issue of revoking the entire board will most likely be brought up.

The popularity of Doru Nicolaescu collapsed after this proposal (even though it seems very reasonable), because he also lost the sympathy of those he supports, but I don"t think he was too conflicted about it, for two reasons: first of all the man knows what it"s like to be really unpopular, and besides his popularity rating was close to zero in the first place.

The fact that the General Shareholder Meeting did not meet the quorum required to make a decision on the merger has created a very telling situation: the idea of the merger was born at the BSE, it was its initiative, whereas the Sibiu exchange was always against it. But Sibex adopted the decision on the merger on the same afternoon; if the people in Bucharest had wanted the merger, on Saturday, at the postponed general shareholder meeting, they could have easily voted for it, with a quorum of just 50%.

Well, on Saturday, the shareholders that attended the General shareholder meeting accounted for just 8% of the share capital of the BSE!

This proves, clear as day, that the merger is not an important matter and that interest in it has waned, because major changes in the interests of the BSE took place in the interests of the shareholders of the BSE.

It needs to be reminded that the budget of the BSE raised objections and that the vice-president of the BSE voted against it and has expressly requested for it to be recorded in the minutes of the meeting.

I"ve saved the surprise for the end of this editorial: the decision of the General Shareholder Meeting to pay out dividends seems to be illegal, according to the demonstration by Gheorghe Piperea, Law Ph. D. of the University of Bucharest and of the University of Sorbonne I - Pantheon of Paris.

This could become rather serious, given the request to decapitalize the BSE and to have it distribute the ten million Euros resulting as a surplus as extraordinary dividends.

But, if the BSE doesn"t have the legal right to pay out dividends, this not only makes the current decision of the BSE null and void, it does the same for last year"s payment of dividends ...

Still feel like bringing in more money?!...