"Nomura" has offered to help the SIFs sell their shares in BCR

The rumor that the SIFs would be looking to sell their stakes in the Romanian Commercial Bank (BCR), in which they hold about 30% of its share capital, has aroused the interest of some major foreign players, willing to offer their services for this purpose.

The officials of the international investment bank "Nomura" have recently met with the president of the five SIFs, and they were ready to advise them on the issue of "liquidating their shares in BCR", according to sources that did not wish to be named.

Just so they don"t come in empty handed, the analysts of "Nomura" also performed an evaluation of BCR, but the officials of the FICs are keeping it a secret, saying that only public information was used for the study.

"The people of Nomura came to make us an offer to provide consulting services on how to ensure the liquidity of the shares of BCR", Mr. Petre Pavel Szel, the president of SAI Muntenia said, without going into details on what the proposals made by "Nomura" consisted of.

Mr. Szel added: "Nomura made this consulting proposal, it remains to be seen on whether we are going to hire them or somebody else, or whether we are going to hire anybody at all. The people of Nomura are interested in signing a consulting contract with one or several of the SIFs on the subject of their stakes in BCR".

According to the president of SAI Muntenia, a decision on the hiring of a consultant may be made in autumn, prior to the expiration of the deadline for the listing of the bank, stipulated in the agreement to postpone the listing of BCR, which was signed in 2009 by Erste and the SIFs. The agreement is set to expire in October.

The talks between the SIFs and the Austrians of "Erste" concerning the sale of BCR have started heating up over these past few months, as the shareholders of the bank have not been paid dividends by BCR for the last two years, as the profit was used for capitalization, even though the privatization contract stipulated that Erste was required to pay out dividends.

Some of the SIFs were unhappy with the statements of the management of BCR in the first half of the year, claiming that the Bucharest Stock Exchange was not liquid enough for the listing of BCR. Dominique Bruynseels, the executive CEO of BCR, angered some of the bank"s shareholders in May, with his statement that at the time, there was no schedule for the listing of the bank.

However, in mid-June, the presidents of the SIFs were invited to Vienna, to meet with the officials of "Erste", in order to discuss the possibility of selling the stakes that the latter own in BCR. A similar meeting is set to take place this month, but the date has not been set yet, Ioan Cuzman, the president of SIF "Banat-Crişana", said for BURSA.

He said that there are about four or five alternatives for liquidating the shares of BCR being considered at the moment, at least partly due to the meeting with the experts of "Nomura", but a final alternative has not yet been discussed.

"The specialists of Nomura have presented several alternatives for solving the issue of the liquidity of the shares of BCR. We are currently discussing four or five alternatives, but we haven"t chosen any of them for the moment. We don"t have a conclusion", said Mr. Cuzman.

Out of the five SIFs, SIF "Moldova" (SIF2) seems to be the most vocal in its relationship with "Erste", as it sued the bank, demanding the voiding of the bank"s share capital increase by 55.42 million lei through the incorporation of the net profit for 2010, the distribution of dividends and the approval of the financial statements for 2010.

SIF "Moldova" had previously included on the agenda of its Extraordinary General Shareholder Meeting the approval of the sale of its stake in BCR, but the necessary quorum for the meeting was not reached.

SIF2 was also the first SIF who spoke about the meetings with foreign and domestic specialists in order to find solutions to sell its stake in BCR. Dominique Bruynseels, the executive CEO of BCR had previously said that the Bucharest Stock Exchange was not liquid enough to have the bank listed.

"Nomura" could not be contacted by the end of the edition.

This is not the first time when "Nomura" tries to secure a contract on the domestic capital market. The Japanese bank participated together with "Alpha Bank" and "Alpha Finance" in the auction for the intermediation of the secondary offer to sell 9.8% of the stake that the Romanian state had in "Petrom", but lost to the consortium led by the Russians of "Renaissance".