Nicolae Danila, the former chief executive of Banca Comerciala Romana owns more Erste shares than Andreas Treichl, CEO of the majority shareholder of the biggest Romanian bank.
"Indeed, I am the biggest individual shareholder of Erste Bank," Danila confirmed for ZF.
The former CEO of BCR came to own this much in Erste because of the substantial BCR stake he had, which accounted for 0.1% in the bank.
Danila took advantage of the Austrians' offer at the end of 2006 choosing to swap most of his BCR shares for Erste shares, a 6 to 1 swap. Then in 2007, Danila continued to buy Erste shares as part of the plan that allows managers of the Austrian group to buy stock at discounted prices.
Danila is now concerned about the steep decline of the Erste price amid the generalised decline affecting the stock markets and the banking industry in particular.
"I expect it to show its growth potential because the price has fallen quite a lot lately," Danila says.
The price per Erste share continued to go down on the Vienna Stock Exchange yesterday, reaching 42 euros after having previously fallen to a minimum of 41.39 euros. This is the lowest price in the past year.
Under the circumstances, the market capitalisation of BCR's majority shareholder visibly fell below the 14 billion euros, to 13.59 billion euros, 4.7 billion euros less than in 2006.
Andreas Treichl, CEO of Erste, is an active buyer of shares of the bank he runs. Last August he bought 45,400 shares in ten instalments, almost half of them at 54.76 euros, and the rest at lower and lower prices, of as little as 49.51 euros. The data published by Erste thus far do not cover the last four months of the year
Nicolae Danila resigned his CEO position with BCR on December 1. The news took the market by surprise; although him being replaced was considered inevitable, many were ex
