The savage dance around SIBEX

A savage dance intended to defeat the law and decency has begun yesterday morning, around the Sibiu Exchange - Sibex, when, after the publication of an article in BURSA, a report was put up on the website of Sibex concerning a rectification of the ruling of the Court of Sibiu, which had extended its prior suspension of the decisions of the General Shareholder Meeting of Sibex. Teodor Ancuţa notified the Romanian National Securities Commission (CNVM) that he was still the president and managing director of Sibex, even though he had handed in his resignation from one of those positions and he had been dismissed from the other, and the CNVM did not validate the new Board of Directors of Sibex, postponing the confirmation until next week, when it would hold a new meeting, even though the issue had been scheduled to be discussed in the Commission"s meeting of yesterday.

Let"s follow this affair:

1. Yesterday, BURSA noticed that the ruling of the Court of Sibiu which suspended the decisions of the General Shareholder Meeting of Sibex, did not concern the decision to dismiss the old Board of Directors not the one to elect a new Board, so all that is missing is for the CNVM to confirm the new president of Sibex - Cristian Sima - so he can start exercising his responsibilities as chairman.

2. After the article appeared in BURSA, Sibex reported to the Romanian National Securities Commission that, two days earlier, the Court of Sibiu has rectified his ruling and suspended all the decisions of the General Shareholder Meeting, including the dismissal of the old Board of Directors and the election of the new one.

3. All of the above caused Teodor Ancuţa to draw the conclusion that he was still president and managing director of Sibex, because even though he was dismissed from his position of president, after resigning from the position of managing director, the decision of the General Shareholder Meeting to separate the two positions was suspended; it ensues that he couldn"t have resigned from the first position and could not therefore be suspended from the second he held at Sibex, a fact which he decided to notify the CNVM about and then he returned to his office at Sibex.

4. After all this, the commissioners who met to validate the election of the new Board of Directors of Sibex decided they needed more information and postponed the validation until next week.

Aside from BURSA, which did its job in an honest manner, as it should be done in the first place, all the other players gleefully trampled the law and deontology, or, at least common sense, beneath their feet.

First of all, the Court of Sibiu, can"t just go back and change its ruling the way it did - "Sorry, we made a mistake, we meant to say items one to eleven, instead of items one to seven".

Lawyer Gheorghe Piperea was even more specific: "The rectification of a ruling can only be made by an appeal. A first instance ruling can"t be rectified without an appeal".

Our own layers claim that the court of Sibiu improperly invokes "the clerical errors" as a grounds for rectifying the ruling, since the notion of "clerical error" does not concern the laziness of the one who copy/pasted when transcribing the ruling (it is obvious that in the ruling concerning the decisions of the Ordinary General Shareholder Meeting, which includes eleven items, someone just copied over the other ruling above, which concerned the decisions of the Extraordinary General Shareholder Meeting which only includes seven items and thus the dismissal and the elections were not covered by the suspension, because they were present in the four items which weren"t mentioned in the initial ruling).

Our lawyers claim that the notion of "clerical error" concerns other types of situations, such as for instance, rejecting a lawsuit for failing to pay some judicial stamp duty, but, if it were to be later found out that it had been paid and that the court had been negligent, then the ruling can be rectified.

What"s more, the ruling was issued on May 23rd, but Sibex sent it to the Romanian National Securities Commission on May 25th, after BURSA published the article in question; for two days, someone at Sibex mulled over it, grumbled something like "Well I"ll be!" and only later said: "Maybe I should tell the others, because after all, Sibex is a public company and look at what those guys at BURSA are saying..."

With his marshal scepter in his bag, Teodor Ancuţa returned from Păltiniş just like Napoleon from the island of Elba and once again proclaimed himself the emperor of Sibex, getting ready for his own Waterloo, putting the Romanian National Securities Commission in one hell of a situation.

Regardless of how logical the arguments of Ancuţa may be when he claims that he is still the president-managing director of Sibex in office, his change of mind is much too similar to those of Daniel Ţepeş, to be convincing and is bound to sully the image of the Exchange he founded and that we can assume he loves.

In way over its head, the CNVM started grasping at straws and decided it needed until next week to think whether it should validate Cristian Sima as the new president of Sibex, as if the CNVM had the competence to decide whether or not to agree with the election in question.

It"s like the CNVM actually views itself as a shareholder of Sibex, and not just any shareholder, but the one that has the "golden share" and the right of veto.

In reality, all the CNVM has to do is to decide on whether Sima and the members of the new Board of Directors meet the requirements for their positions, which is what it is must do, if someone asks it, even in the case of someone that hasn"t been elected in a General Shareholder Meeting, yet.

For instance, someone can ask the CNVM to determine whether they qualify for being the president of an exchange, on principle only, without being concerned with any election, and if the CNVM finds it to be so, that settles it.

What does the Romanian National Securities Commission have to do with the elections at Sibex?

Nothing whatsoever.

What does the CNVM have to do with the rulings of the Court of Sibiu and with its blunders?

Again, nothing whatsoever.

And now comes the question: in the case of the BSE, Grzegorz Koniecny was validated as a member of the Board of Directors ever since May 10th, (even though whether he met the conditions for holding that position is arguable at best); what is the reason for tergiversating the confirmation of the new Board of Directors of Sibex?

Today is May 26th; how does the Romanian National Securities Commission justify its discriminatory behavior?!