THE ISSUE OF THE LISTING OF BCR Five SIFs, four opinions

• SIF "Transilvania" wants to speed up the completion of the negotiations with Erste to exploit its stake in BCR

Only three of the five financial investment companies (SIFs) have summoned General Shareholder Meetings in September, and included on the Agenda the initiation of the steps for taking BCR public, as requested by several investment funds, about one month ago. Out of the three companies, SIF "Muntenia" has only included the requests of the shareholders on the agenda of the Ordinary General Shareholder Meeting, whereas SIF "Moldova" and SIF "Oltenia" have also included the proposals of their own Boards of Directors, who are requesting that shareholders empower the Board to negotiate alternative ways of liquidizing the shares of BCR, others than the listing of the bank on the Bucharest Stock Exchange.

SIF "Moldova" had a more "diplomatic" opinion, mentioning that this proposal is aimed at the situation where the listing of BCR would not be possible due to reasons outside its control.

On Wednesday night, SIF "Banat-Crişana" announced that the request of the shareholders does not meet the legal requirements and that it will therefore not summon any General Meeting.

"Every SIF has reviewed the requests it has received, I have no way of knowing if there have been similar requests, from the same shareholders, with the same holdings. The SIFs haven"t worked together in their analysis of the requests to summon the General Shareholder Meetings", said Ioan Cuzman, the president of SIF1, who added that, once he has something concrete to announce about the negotiations with Erste, he would do so.

"It is not about lack of transparency", Mr. Cuzman added.

SIF "Transilvania" also announced yesterday that the request of its shareholders fails to comply with several legal provisions, and said in turn that the directors of the company have asked its executives "to accelerate the completion of the negotiations concerning the liquidization of the block of shares owned in BCR, in order to have a General Shareholder Meeting summoned in October 2011". That meeting "would review and decide on the most efficient ways of liquidizing the holdings in BCR, including the possibility of listing the shares on the BSE, as requested by several shareholders", the communiqué sent yesterday by the representatives of SIF 3 states.

The officials of the company also said that the agreement signed between the SIFs and "Erste" concerning the obligation of listing BCR at the end of October when the period by which the listing was delayed will expire, also requires the signers to request and to approve the listing of the shares of BCR, "meaning that none of the contracting parties can deviate from the fulfillment of this obligation, unless other solutions for liquidizing those shares are approved before the expiration of the postponement period".

However, market sources claim that the signing of the Agreement of 2009 do not require the signers to request the listing of BCR.

The listing of BCR on the Bucharest Stock Exchange is stipulated in the contract for the privatization of the bank, which was signed in 2006. In the autumn of 2009 (when the listing was scheduled to take place), the SIFs and "Erste" signed an agreement to postpone the listing for two years.

Recent statements made by some of the presidents of the SIFs, as well as by the officials of "Erste" suggest that other options beside the listing are being considered.

At the end of July, Andreas Treichl, the CEO of "Erste", said that he would do everything in his power to prevent the listing of BCR on the stock exchange, and Ioan Cuzman, the president of SIF "Banat-Crişana" said a few hours later that the Austrians of "Erste" have made a concrete proposal for the liquidization of the stakes that the SIFs hold in the Romanian Commercial Bank.

The announcement by SIF3 suggests that the SIFs and Erste are in a race against the clock to reach an agreement on the sale or the listing of BCR, as the agreement for the postponement of the listing will expire in about five weeks. Market sources speak about the possibility of the SIFs and Erste meeting again in two weeks to continue the negotiations on the subject of the listing of BCR.