SIF Banat-Crisana tries to distribute bonus shares

SIF Banat-Crisana will propose its shareholders to increase the share capital and distribute bonus shares. It is the first of the SIFs (Financial Investment Companies) that proposes to distribute bonus shares to all its shareholders.

The proposal is unlikely to be approved, with the share capital increase being a matter for the Extraordinary General Meeting of Shareholders to approve. For it to be able to make decisions, it is necessary that at least half of the share capital should attend the EGM. This has never happened in the General Meetings of the SIFs, due to the extremely scattered shareholder structure. The last few years, however, have witnessed a strong concentration trend as far as the shareholder structure is concerned, with 30-40% of the voting rights attending the latest General Meetings.

SIF Banat-Crisana will propose the share capital to be increased by 27.4 million RON (7.8 million euros) to 82.3 million RON (23.5 million euros). The shareholders are supposed to get one bonus share per every two shares held. The increase should be done by including the reserves made from last year”s profit into the share capital. The company did not say whether it would disburse dividends or not under the circumstances. Another meeting, this time for calculating the dividend, is set for the same date, yet for four hours earlier.

The proposal of the Board of Directors comes at a time when SIF shares have been rapidly going down over the last few weeks due to the initiative of the Budget-Finance Committee of the Chamber of Deputies to have the 1% stake cap refer to the groups of investors acting in concert instead of individual investors. The decision of the companies to disburse bonus shares is usually welcomed by investors on the Romanian market, usually leading to an increase in the stock market value due to the psychological effect bonus shares distribution creates. After all, Banca Transilvania or Impact, two companies that have got their investors used to bonus shares have been among the top performers on the market this year, too. vlad.nicolaescu@zf.ro