BCR's employees are now faced with the deal of a lifetime: the largest money flow in Romania's history is headed towards them. More than 11,000 employees at the bank will be able to sell their shares in BCR for a profit that is 20 times higher than the investment they made two years ago.
At that time, one share in Romanian's largest bank could be bought by its employees for 1.035 RON, while the new owner of the bank is now offering more than 23 RON (6.5 euros) for the same share, 22 times higher. All in all, BCR's employees hold 8% in the bank, and the value of their stake is put at 412 million euros.
Still, Erste's offer is less generous than that made to the Romanian state a year ago, when the Austrians were offering 7.65 euros per share (almost 18% more). Even so, BCR employees are still getting the deal of their lifetime: they can receive 20 times more than what they invested in only two years.
If the 8% was equally divided among the 11,500 employees of the bank, each of them would stand to receive 36,000 euros for their stake.
Where will this money go into the real economy? Will it go towards purchases of flats or cars? Or will it stay on the capital market?
In any case, the bank's employees are really tempted to sell their shares in BCR, even though Erste has an even better offer for them. BCR employees can get one Erste share for every six BCR shares held, so that each share in the Romanian bank is worth 8.9 euros in this case, almost 40% more than the offer in cash. Erste's shares were trading at 53 euros on the Vienna Stock Exchange yesterday. Brokers say that the chances of employees investing their cash (from the sale) on the Bucharest Stock Exchange are slim.
"I don't really think the money will go to the Stock Exchange or at least not that much so as to be considered significant.
"The employees will use the money to make a better life for their families and will be mainly directed towards the real estate or car market," believes Adrian Ceuca, deputy general manager of Broker Cluj. Mutual fund managers are not expecting a significant amount of investment from the BCR employees on the mutual funds market, either.
Real estate consultants estimate that if the employees were to invest in the real estate market, the chain effect would bring up to one billion euros onto the market.
In big cities such as Constanta, Timisoara, Iasi and Brasov, 36,000 euros would be enough for a studio or even a two-room flat. In Bucharest, however, this money is only enough for a down payment on an approximate 100,000-euro loan for buying a bigger home. Under the circumstances, the hundreds of millions of euros the employees may spend on this market are turning into funds of over one billion euros.
"We anticipate at least one third of the 11,000 employees of BCR, if not more, will choose to invest on the real estate market," says Radu Lucianu, managing partner of the Eurisko real estate company.
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