TRUST IN THE BSE, once again compromised An unforgettable general shareholder meeting

The elections for a new Board of Directors of the Bucharest Stock Exchange have been compromised yesterday, following a string of embarrassing mistakes in the organization of the General Shareholder Meeting.

After a 7-hour long meeting and hesitations in the counting of the votes, Lucian Anghel, the president of the BSE, announced that the new Board of Directors consists of: Otto Naegeli, Robert Pană, Dan Paul, Cristi Micu, Lucian Anghel, Valerian Ionescu, Gabriel Marica, Octavian Molnar, Radu Toia.

At first, the shareholders have waited for several hours the counting of the votes for the election of the Board of the BSE, because some of the e-mails from the shareholders could not open, due to the extended electronic signatures. When the count finally ended, the president of the BSE announced a list of "winners" on which Dan Paul, the president of the Association of Brokers, was featured the last, with a total number of 200,000 votes.

Dan Paul immediately hit the ceiling: "How can I have just 200,000 votes, when I gave myself over 1,000,000?"

Lucian Anghel decided that the votes should be counted manually.

The shareholders clamored, complained about the bad organization of the elections and asked for a mention of the fact that they reserve the right to dispute the General Shareholder Meeting in court.

As the secretariat was counting the votes, embarrassing details about the organization of the General Shareholder Meeting. Some people said that the software for the counting of the votes was made on the night which preceded the General Shareholder Meeting, because the technical specifications had been provided just one day earlier, and as a result it was buggy.

Lucian Anghel said that it was the executive of the BSE that handled the contracting of the software, meaning CEO Ludwik Sobolewski.

Others just couldn't understand why the program didn't work, considering that it had been previously used at the SIFs. Apparently the cause of the bugs was the modifications made to it one evening ago.

The representative of one of the most important shareholders of the Bucharest Stock Exchange, SIF Oltenia, felt offended by the behavior of the BSE toward its shareholders. Tudor Ciurezu, the CEO of SIF 5, said: "Do not ignore us! Tell us the cause of this failure! Do we keep waiting or not? We are the shareholders of this company, we didn't just walk in off the street! Thank you for the way you «organized» this General Shareholder Meeting. I would like to ask that, once you're done counting the votes, to check whether you still have the necessary quorum to elect the president. I am leaving this meeting".

As they were waiting for the manual count, the shareholders of the BSE started wondering whether the meeting met the quorum requirements. Dan Paul asked Lucian Anghel to verify that. Subsequently, an attendance of 63% was announced, which meant that the General Shareholder Meeting could continue.

Another rumor went through the General Shareholder Meeting, at one time - that on the second count, the number of votes was greater than the number of votes of the present shareholders, which would have been fit for a comedy, had it been found to be true.

Octavian Molnar, board member of the BSE gave us the following statement, after yesterday's General Shareholder Meeting: "The way the executive, represented by the CEO, has organized this General Shareholder Meeting, at the request of the president, seems to me to have disregarded any respect whatsoever when it comes to shareholders. Being a member of the Board of Directors, I take responsibility for the fact that we have not demonstrated our ability to control the executive and I want to apologize to shareholders. I am going to ask for the executive to be sanctioned".

We want to mention that the BSE did not display the number of votes received by each candidate for verification purposes, as the result was only announced by Lucian Anghel verbally.

Regardless of the outcome, the General Shareholder Meeting of the BSE is compromised by the countless stumbles and along with it is the trust in the flag-bearer of the capital market.

How can one trust a company that gets the vote count wrong when it elects its executive management? After 20 years, the votes are being counted manually at the BSE, but not because they lack the necessary technology, but because votes are being stolen.