The shareholders include U.S. investment funds Firebird and Broadhurst, the investment funds of Raiffeisen, Carpatica, Banca Transilvania, Certinvest, the pension funds of Aviva and ING, and brokerage house SSIF Broker (BRK.RO).
The SIFs own 30% in BCR, the largest bank in Romania, and agreed with Erste, the majority stakeholder with 69.4% in the capital, to delay floatation until October 2011. Recently, some of SIF heads announced Erste made them a purchase offer, while the Austrian officials stated they had no intention to list BCR on the bourse.
“The purpose of the meeting was to persuade us to give up the request to convene the general meeting and to inform us on the talks between the SIFs and Erste about what to do with the stake in BCR. We maintain that BCR floatation is the best option,” said Horia Gusta, general manager of Certinvest.
(English version by Catalina Apostoiu, Editing by Radu Bostan)