Austrians of "Erste" have made us a concrete proposal to make the stakes of the SIFs in BCR more liquid, said Ioan Cuzman, the president of SIF "Banat-Crişana" (SIF1), without disclosing what the offer of Erste entails.

"We"ve been negotiating for about a year, we"ve had about five or six very good meetings and we have requested that Erste issue an official press release as soon as possible. We have already gone the distance, the talks are close to being complete", said the president of SIF1. This is the first time that a president of one of the SIFs admits that the SIFs are intensely negotiating with Erste on the subject of BCR.

The statement of SIF1 comes after Andreas Treichl, the executive chairman of "Erste Bank", which is the majority shareholder of BCR, said on Friday that he would do his best to prevent the listing of BCR on the Bucharest Stock Exchange, even though it is stipulated in the contract for the privatization of BCR which was signed in 2006.

The five financial companies already own about 30% of the shares of BCR. The shareholders of the SIFs have recently asked the summoning of General Shareholder Meetings to take the steps needed to list BCR.

Ş.C. (Translated by Cosmin Ghidoveanu) Austrians of "Erste" have made us a concrete proposal to make the stakes of the SIFs in BCR more liquid, said Ioan Cuzman, the president of SIF "Banat-Crişana" (SIF1), without disclosing what the offer of Erste entails.

"We"ve been negotiating for about a year, we"ve had about five or six very good meetings and we have requested that Erste issue an official press release as soon as possible. We have already gone the distance, the talks are close to being complete", said the president of SIF1. This is the first time that a president of one of the SIFs admits that the SIFs are intensely negotiating with Erste on the subject of BCR.

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