Radu accuses Cuzman of trying to sway his vote

Ioan Cuzman, Emil Cazan, Ion Stancu, Horia Ciorcila (Chairman of Banca Transilvania), Zoltan Hosszu, Pavel Belean, and Carmen Dumitrescu obtained most of the votes in the General Shareholders Meeting (GSM) for the Board of Directors of SIF Banat-Crisana.

“I observed a total lack of respect for shareholders. [The management] presented nothing about SIF1. How can you say that the management was a good one when shares have plunged 90 percent? I have seen drops of 50-60 percent on the stock exchange, but 90 percent?!,” Radu added. Parliamentarians have established a Sub Commission within the Senate Budget-Finance Commission, and are preparing to modify the capital market legislation, to allow for the raising of the SIF ownership threshold to five percent from the current one percent, to clarify the term “concerted action,” and to change the salary policy of the National Securities Commission (CNVM).

The one percent SIF ownership limit, including for those accused of concerted action, has prompted a wave of discontent among investors, who argued that the current law protects SIF management teams and does not allow shareholders to have a say in the way companies are administered. Four of the five financial investment companies elected their new administrators at the end of last week, with the GSM of SIF Banat-Crisana the most disputed. A series of shareholders, including foreign investment funds and local investors, contested the elections after they were accused of engaging in concerted action. Moreover, a group of shareholders, who together own at least five percent of the company’s share capital, called for a new General Shareholders Meeting within 60 days. “During the GSM, it was decided that a new General Meeting will be held within 60 days, and the SIF’s current management agreed to this at the meeting,” Horia Ciorcila, Chairman of the Banca Transilvania lender, told Business Standard. Ciorcila won a mandate as administrator, but the bank was presumed to be acting in a concerted effort with a series of shareholders, together controlling 17.5 percent of the SIF’s shares.

“You cannot make a decision and say that a group of shareholders are “presumed” to have acted in a concerted manner, and then take things in the direction you want. We will propose a legislative change, to be up-to-date and in accordance with European legislation,” Ovidiu Marian, member of the Senate’s Sub Commission, told Business Standard.