You may say, just like you may have done on other occasions, that I"ve run out of people to sing my praises, but I can"t keep quiet about the fact that the BURSA daily provided the best coverage in the mass-media (be it in print, broadcast, online or by phone) of the two General Shareholder Meetings of the two Exchanges, held at the same time - Friday - in Bucharest and Sibiu, displaying the information on the course of the two events, in real time on the www.bursa.ro website.

Readers of the BURSA newspaper were the first to find out that the issue of the merger with Sibiu was postponed in Bucharest and were the first to find out that Cristian Sima was elected as president of Sibex (a piece of news which had 200 views in the first minute after it was posted).

Some of the readers noted this achievement and congratulated us; one of the brokers I value called me to thank me: "You"ve added a note of excitement to the whole day!"

I must say that we have ourselves lived these events in a state of "excitement", even though the reports were made from outside the rooms in which the two board meetings took place, rooms to which we didn"t have access during that time.

I need to add a note here: the commendable initiative of Siminel Andrei, who, in 2005-2006, allowed journalists access to the General Shareholder Meetings of the BSE shareholders, thus inaugurating what I thought would become a tradition in transparency, was cut short after the first shareholder meeting chaired by Stere Farmache, during his first term. In order to secure direct access to information, some publications resorted to a subterfuge: they bought one share in each of the two exchanges and used their newly acquired shareholder status to get the right to attend the shareholder meetings.

That is one way to do it.

I don"t like it.

I am a journalist, not a shareholder.