At the end of 2006, Andreas Treichl, CEO of Erste Bank owned 123,440 shares of the bank he runs, which controls BCR, according to the annual report. His shares were worth some 7.17 million euros back then, when the price was 58.10 euros/share. Meanwhile the value has gone down to 5.3 million euros, after Erste shares closed at only 43.15 euros on the Vienna Stock Exchange on Friday, up slightly against the previous day.
Still, Treichl's stake value continued to increase in 2007 as he bought more shares.
According to the data published on the website of the Austrian financial market supervisory authority, Treichl bought another 45,400 shares last year, after the reported transactions took place in August. It appears that Erste's chief did not conduct any other transactions by the end of 2007, but other members of the executive board reported acquisitions towards the end of the year, when the price was visibly below 50 euros.
According to the available data, Erste's top man had 168,840 shares at the end of 2007, with a value of 7.28 million euros based on last Friday's price.
Erste Bank complies with the Austrian corporate governance and makes public the transactions of shares its executive board and Supervisory Council members conduct on the stock market.
Nicolae Danila, BCR's former CEO says he is the largest individual shareholder of Erste Bank, first of all because he had been the main individual shareholder of the Romanian bank until the end of 2006, and swapped most of his shares for Erste shares. In May last year, Danila expressed his intent to exercise his right to buy another 3,000 Erste shares as part of the programme to ensure the loyalty of the Austrian group's managers to which BCR's executives had been granted access and offered a 20% discount.
The result of the "competition" for the position of "the biggest individual shareholder" of Erste Bank remains to be seen, as Treichl continues to be an active buyer.
Erste Bank has 316,288,945 outstanding shares, with the employees of the group owning about 3% of them, and BCR employees holding the better part of the 3%.
Erste Bank officials will meet with representatives of the Central Depositary, of the Bucharest Stock Exchange and of the National Securities Commission (CNVM) today to discus the final details concerning the upcoming floatation of the Austrian bank.
Erste has already received the preliminary approval of CNVM on its listing prospectus, after the institution issued a certificate last autumn confirming that the bank had met the legal requirements for floatation in Bucharest. The last procedural steps will be completed over the coming period, and the talks with Central Depositary are very important in this regard.
The floatation had been initially promised for the end of 2007, when the ban on the sale by BCR employees who had become Erste shareholders in December 2006 expired. They are already able to cash in on their investment if they so wish on the Vienna or Prague stock markets, but Erste has committed to make such transactions easier by floatation on the Bucharest Stock Exchange.
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