Shareholders of the leading state-held Romanian bank, Banca Comerciala Romana (Romanian Commercial Bank – BCR) on Tuesday made some changes in the Board of Directors, replacing vice-presidents and administrators.
Nicolae Danila was reconfirmed for his position (president) and so was vice-president Ion Nitu.
Three new vice-presidents were appointed: Mihai Ilie – head of the General Risk Management Department within BCR, Natalia Hurtuc – head of the BCR Galati branch and Eugen Carstea, deputy manager of BCR’s Treasury Department.
Mihai Ilie and Natalia Hurtuc have been with BCR ever since its establishment. Eugen Carstea has previously worked for Banca Anglo-Romana (English-Romanian Bank).
Two of the vice-presidents not reconfirmed are Gheorghe Irimia and Stanel Ghencea. BCR had a vice-president vacancy.
The shareholders also made some changes in the non-executive membership of the Board of Directors.
The most interesting names to have come up include Florin Georgescu, PDSR (Party of Social Democracy) member and chairman of the Budget-Finance Committee within the Chamber of Deputies, Sorin Tesu, PM Adrian Nastase’s chief of staff, and Teodor Mihaiescu, SIF Muntenia chairman, also a PDSR member.
The other Board members are Mihai Fercala, SIF Transilvania chairman, reconfirmed for his position in the Board, Joszef Birtalan, also reconfirmed, and the newly-elected Ionel Desmireanu.
The appointment of the new Board of Directors was unanimously voted by the shareholders.
BCR’s main stockholder is the Privatisation Authority (69.88%), with the remaining shares split among the five financial investment companies (SIF).
Shareholders on Tuesday approved BCR’s share capital increase by 3,611.2bn lei, taken from the reserves made by the bank. The authorised, subscribed and deposited share capital now amounts to 7,924.68bn lei.
The stock held by the five SIFs in BCR is divided as follows: SIF Banat-Crisana- 6%, SIF Moldova-6%, SIF Transilvania-6%, SIF Muntenia-6% and SIF Oltenia- 6.1175%.
BCR in Q1 made 1,357.8bn lei (about $48.5 million) in gross profit, up 78.3% as compared to the same time last year and over 1,055bn lei in net profit (about $38 million). BCR holds 30% of the total Romanian banking system assets.
The authorities say BCR is to be privatised in two years. The Government has yet to decide upon the privatisation strategy, which will be subject to many top-level economic and political negotiations.
Early this year BCR set up its own leasing company, BCR Leasing and is currently contemplating its own insurance company.