The security of lies on the BSE

I hear that instead of concerning itself with the security of the confidential information of the BSE, its Board of Directors is scrambling to discover how did "BURSA" find out about the resignation of Daniel Ţepeş, which he had lied about, claiming that it had not happened.

It is indeed a praiseworthy concern.

I thought I should help them elucidate this mystery and publicly inform the members of the Board of Directors of the BSE about where we got the information on the resignation of Daniel Ţepeş from.

We got it from Daniel Ţepeş himself, gentlemen.

It"s Mr. Daniel Ţepeş who conceived it.

He signed it himself.

We got it from him.

It"s simple.

Furthermore, on the morning of the day of his resignation, Ţepeş appeared on TV and publicly announced his resignation, even though the BSE had not issued any announcement about this event (being a public company, it was not allowed to let the information leak into the media, before making sure that the information had been made available to all investors, through a press release disseminated through the official BSE channels and sent to other publications.

Perhaps it would be better if the Board of Directors of the BSE concerned itself with the fact that one of its members - namely Mr. Ţepeş - violated the internal procedures of the institution.

Trading in the stock of the BSE was not suspended on August 24th, 2010, between 11:30 and 15:22, during which time the website of "BURSA" announced the resignation of Daniel Ţepeş and later announced his intention to go back on his decision.

Trading continued throughout all that time without any interruption.

This violation of the rules of the BSE should be a cause for concern as well.

The reasons for which Stere Farmache, the chairman of the BSE, allowed the institution he is leading to publish a misleading press release, which omitted to mention the resignation of Daniel Ţepeş, is another problem that might give the Board of Directors of the BSE something to do.

Another thing that the Board of Directors should perhaps concern itself with, is the manner in which Daniel Ţepeş went back on his resignation: "What is the standard procedure for going back on a resignation?"

For instance, should one register a request for the cancellation of the submitted resignation, or is it enough to just write on the resignation form "I"ve changed my mind!"?

Because if Ţepeş used the second solution (and the Registry of the BSE has no request to cancel the resignation on record), it would seem that he is serving as a member of the Board of Directors of the BSE, without actually being a member any more, due to a far simpler reason than the fact that the law has been broken.

It"s simply that his change of mind is not official, but rather a "rumor".

The only document that was adequately recorded was the resignation.

So, instead of thinking of filing complaints with the Prosecutor"s office and the Police and demanding that they investigate how the resignation (which was made public!) actually reached the public, the Board of the BSE should concern itself with what the Prosecutor"s Office would uncover at the BSE itself, during any possible investigations.

• The old tradition of going back on resignation decisions

Even though having a change of heart and going back on a resignation is almost a tradition on the Romanian stock market, the earlier cases when this happened are not relevant in this case.

The last time someone previous change of heart and took their resignation back was in February, when Cristian Sima, the head of brokerage firm WBS, resigned from the Board of Directors of the Sibiu Exchange, so he could run for chairman of the BSE, and after failing to get elected, changed his mind and returned to his old position on the Board of the Sibiu Exchange.

A certain preoccupation for the procedure implemented in that casewould be very useful in the current situation, although the case of Cristian Sima is far more transparent and innocent than the one of Daniel Ţepeş, with the major difference between the two cases being that the Sibiu Exchange was not public at the time.

An older case is the resignation of Siminel Andrei in 2003, from his position of chairman of the Association of Brokers (called ANSVM at the time), and his return two weeks later: at the time, the reason he gave for his change of mind was the fact that allegedly, his resignation had to be approved by brokers, which they didn"t (this obviously was mere pretense, because a resignation doesn"t require anyone"s approval, it just requires prior notice). The major difference between the "change of mind" of Siminel Andrei and that of Daniel Ţepeş is the fact that the former concerned the chairmanship of a professional association, where yes, it was a nice thing to have it honor its internal rules, but after all, if its members were OK with such a violation, it was merely their business.

What"s more, neither Sima nor Siminel (who are not related, despite the resemblance of their names) later tried to go back and claim that they did not resign.