The state will collect 2.25bn euros from the sale of the stake in BCR to Austrian Erste Bank Group.
The EBRD and IFC are to get 1.5bn euros, but those that stand to gain the most from this deal are the employees of BCR, who made 20 times more than they invested in BCR shares in a year and a half.
The state in 2004 sold 8% in BCR to employees for 10,350 ROL (0.3 euros) per share. The par value of a share is 10,000 ROL. The state recently sold the shares for 7.65 euros each.
According to his own wealth declaration, Florin Georgescu, first deputy governor of the National Bank, owns 79,246 BCR shares, which he bought a year and a half ago while he was the chairman of the bank''s Supervisory Board. He paid a total of 820,196,100 ROL (27,000 euros) for the shares, which are now worth 0.606 million euros, based on the price offered by Erste Bank.
As for BCR''s executive chairman Nicolae Danila, there is no public information about the number of shares held. The chairman of another privatised bank, BRD, Bogdan Baltazar, was allowed to buy 0.1% in that institution. Judging by the price offered by the Austrians, BCR was appraised at 6.063bn euros.
Erste has pledged to float BCR on the Stock Exchange in three years. The SIFs own 30.1% in BCR and, along with the bank''s employees, they are the most interested party in seeing the bank listed as soon as possible, in order to be able to capitalise on their stakes. After a half-year battle, Erste defeated the largest Portuguese financial group, Millennium BCP, in the final competition for BCR. Yesterday, Erste''s shares dropped 4% at the opening of the trading sessions on the international stock markets, as the Austrians announced they needed to raise 2.4bn euros for the acquisition in Romania. On the other hand, Millennium''s shares rose 7% reverting to the same level as two months ago, when the Portuguese were selected for the final round of the BCR race. The increase was normal, as the investors will no longer need to cope with the possible capital increase that the Portuguese would have carried out, had they bought the largest bank in Romania.
The privatisation contract was endorsed by the Government yesterday and is to be forwarded to Parliament. Prime Minister Calin Popescu Tariceanu announced the money collected by the state would go the Infrastructure Development Fund to pay for important projects. "We want this money to go to concrete infrastructure projects, and I mean not only road infrastructure here, but also health care infrastructure, too," Tariceanu said.
Economic analysts yesterday confirmed that the price paid by Erste, and deemed as high, will lead to an appreciation of all the Romanian assets and especially to more foreign investments, mainly from Austria. Austria will take over the European Commission presidency as of January 1, 2006, which is expected to bode well for Romania.
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