SIF1 will not summon the General Shareholder Meeting to discuss the listing of BCR

The management of SIF "Banat-Crişana" (SIF1) yesterday announced, without too many details, that it will not summon the General Shareholder Meeting of Shareholders to initiate the process for listing BCR, as requested by several shareholders, in all the five financial investment companies (SIFs).

The officials of SIF1 only said that "reviewing the requests of a group of shareholders to summon the General Shareholder Meeting", the Board of Directors found that the legal requirements for that aren"t met".

Recently, the Romanian National Securities Commission "admonished" SIF "Banat-Crişana" for misinterpreting the provisions of the capital market legislation, and suspending the voting rights of several shareholders.

The decision of SIF1 is surprising, as SIF "Moldova", SIF "Oltenia" and SIF "Muntenia" have decided to act on the request of their shareholders and to summon General Ordinary Shareholder Meetings in September, and to include those requests of on the agenda of the meeting.

Some of the shareholders who had requested the summoning of a General Shareholder Meeting include funds managed by Aviva, ING, Certinvest, BT Asset Management, Raiffeisen Asset Management, STK Financial and SAI Carpatica, together with "Firebird", "Broadhurst" and brokerage firm "Broker" Cluj.

This move by SIF1 could be a hint that the "joint front" of the SIFs against the Austrians of Erste, the majority shareholder of BCR, is falling apart. Together, the SIFs own about 30% of BCR.

The announcement by SIF1 comes about two weeks after, the meeting held at the headquarters of SIF "Muntenia", between the officials of the SIFs and the representatives of the shareholders, in which that concerned the request to summon the Ordinary General Shareholder Meeting. Before the meeting, the president of SIF1 Ioan Cuzman hinted that he would try to convince the shareholders to drop their request.

Recently, the SIFs seem to be taking different positions in their discussions with Erste on the listing of BCR on the Bucharest Stock Exchange. SIF2 has been the most vocal in favor of taking the bank public.

Out of the five SIFs, only SIF "Transilvania" has not yet made a decision on the request to summon the General Shareholder Meeting.