English
The rumor -which was mentioned in an article published on Thursday- that a team of the Romanian National Securities Commission (CNVM) is visiting the BSE and evaluating its system for securing the confidential market data, has now been confirmed.
Commissioner Lorand Kralik is leading the investigations concerning the security of the market data at the BSE, but is also examining the compliance with the law in the case of the lies of the BSE concerning the resignation of Daniel Ţepeş.
A surprising outlook on the scandal of the lies of the BSE evidences the connections between the case of the resignation of Daniel Ţepeş and the matter of principle of securing confidential market data at the BSE.
The press was informed about this resignation by Daniel Ţepeş himself, early morning, meaning that BURSA was able to display this information on its website, at 11:30.
This makes it highly probable that the resignation was officially recorded at the BSE a little earlier, sometime around 10:00.
The fact that Daniel Ţepeş changed his mind about his resignation appeared on the website of our paper at 15:22, which means that the "team of negotiators" of the Board of Directors of the Bucharest Stock Exchange - led by BSE chairman Stere Farmache - which gave Ţepeş what he wanted (the appointment of Valentin Ionescu as general manager of the BSE, in order to make Ţepeş change his mind on his decision to call for advance elections and to withdraw his resignation). This means that the aforementioned negotiators were aware of the decision of Ţepeş to cancel his resignation, sometime before 15:00 hours.
On September 24th, at 16:13 hours (approximately six hours after the resignation), the lying communiqué appeared on the website of the BSE. The communiqué in question omits the fact that Daniel Ţepeş went through with his resignation, announcing instead that he had reconsidered his decision.
This raises the following questions:
1. Why was such a piece of information on something which had already happened, withheld from investors?
2. Why wasn"t a Communiqué announcing the resignation issued "as soon as possible", as provided in the code of the BSE? (section 3, chapter VI, title II Art. 100 "Issuers are required to notify the BSE of any information specified in article 99, as soon as possible, but no later than 24 hours after the occurrence of any such event").
• NOTE: I am convinced that the Bucharest Stock Exchange will hide behind the imprecision of the expression "as soon as possible"; but can it really take anyone six hours to go down the hallways of the BSE from the Registry room, where the resignation was registered at around 10:00, to the Listed Companies office, which is located on the same floor? Even with their legs sawn off, it couldn"t take anyone more than a few minutes to get from office to the other ...; so overall it doesn"t make any sense.
3. Why did the BSE deliberately postpone the publication of its Communiqué (even in its deliberately lying form) concerning the resignation, until after 80% of the trading session had gone by?
This deliberate holding back of the dissemination of information concerning the BSE as a listed company, was possible because... such a practice is not the exception.
It is the norm!
The BSE has seen numerous cases in which it took hours for a communiqué sent by an issuer to be published on its website!
There is no regulation concerning this time frame.
The management of the BSE twists this provision as they see fit, and they can argue that the delay could be caused by the need to check the accuracy of the information, or by who knows what other "absolutely necessary operations".
They do not say a word about the fact that all of the people in the BSE who become privy to information about issuers, are absolutely free to communicate with anybody outside.
No, there are no restrictions on the use of cell phones.
The employees of the BSE carry them in their pockets all the time. Calls from the landlines of the BSE are not even forbidden, nor are they recorded (because that would violate privacy).
Email is "free".
On top of that, employees can walk in and out of the headquarters of the BSE, without any special restrictions.
So if they truly wanted to see the state of the level of security of confidential data, Mr. Lorand Kralik and his team from the CNVM would be wasting their time examining the IT system and the IT team of the BSE -most likely that"s not where the hitch lies.
Rather, it"s the procedures that need to be examined such as the gates left wide open, which allow the leaking of confidential information from the BSE.
If he were to do that, the commissioner would find out that the so-called "data security" never existed.
Being a listed company, the BSE forgot to be a market anymore
"The Ţepeş case" is interesting from another point of view. The resignation of Ţepeş from the Board of Directors was an event that concerns a listed company and which investors should have been notified about, through a communiqué disseminated in the market system, where the BSE is just an intermediary which provides a service to investors (namely, intermediates communication).
Once the resignation was recorded, it had become an accomplished fact, and the executive management of the BSE was required to automatically disseminate information about that event, by publishing a communiqué and distributing it via its system.
The fact that some of the members of the Board of the BSE were against the resignation of Daniel Ţepeş, has no connection whatsoever with the responsibilities of the management of the Exchange, from the point of view of its role as a market of public interest.
In the event that Ţepeş changed his mind (which he did, but without complying with any regulations concerning the formal registration of such an action), the BSE as an issuer should have notified the BSE market, which would have then published a second communiqué within the system.
What actually happened, the market related-responsibilities of the Executive of the Exchange were suspended by the Board of Directors of the Exchange, with the former acting as if the whole situation had involved any regular listed company.
Being a listed company and a market at the same time, the BSE has mixed up the responsibilities it had in its two positions, in complete disregard of its rules and has put its interest as an issuer first.
This speaks volumes about what the BSE has become after being converted into a joint stock company and after the distribution of its stock for free to brokerage firms.
The group of brokers that has taken over the Bucharest Stock Exchange only sees it as a cash cow, instead of a market.
Quod erat demonstrandum.(F.G.)
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No man"s... time
The website of the BSE has numerous cases of major differences between the moment certain pieces of information were received from the listed companies and the time the same information was disseminated within the system.
Information that the BSE received at 9:39 (Banca Transilvania, September 29th, 2010), was inexplicably made public after a 50 minute delay (10:29).
In the case of a communiqué sent in by Casa de Bucovina-Club de Munte (02.04.2010), the gap is two and a half hours (10:09, and 12:39).
In the case of Transelectrica, (August 4th, 2010), the delay increased to three hours (9:32, as opposed to 12:30),just like it did for Rolast, in which case, on May 19th, 2010, the information was held up at the BSE between 9:26 and 12:33.
But there are cases (see Mefin, January 29th, 2009) where the BSE only published the information on the next day, at 11:00.
Some brokers have repeatedly complained about these delays in the dissemination of information.
Of course, it all depends on how one looks at things; someone more inclined towards cutting the BSE some slack, would probably tell themselves that the people responsible with the dissemination of information are just drinking their morning coffee, while reading "BURSA", instead of doing their job; after all, we"re only human.
But when the management of the BSE starts lying to the public, how can anyone still be expected to be empathetic towards them?!
With the BSE starting to look like it"s the playground of various "gangs", the suspicion that such omissions are deliberate and that the "wise guys" are using them for their own benefits becomes legitimate. (F.G.)
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