* SIF "Transilvania" wants to speed up the completion of the negotiations with Erste to exploit its stake in BCR

Only three of the five financial investment companies (SIFs) have summoned General Shareholder Meetings in September, and included on the Agenda the initiation of the steps for taking BCR public, as requested by several investment funds, about one month ago. Out of the three companies, SIF "Muntenia" has only included the requests of the shareholders on the agenda of the Ordinary General Shareholder Meeting, whereas SIF "Moldova" and SIF "Oltenia" have also included the proposals of their own Boards of Directors, who are requesting that shareholders empower the Board to negotiate alternative ways of liquidizing the shares of BCR, others than the listing of the bank on the Bucharest Stock Exchange.

SIF "Moldova" had a more "diplomatic" opinion, mentioning that this proposal is aimed at the situation where the listing of BCR would not be possible due to reasons outside its control.

On Wednesday night, SIF "Banat-Crişana" announced that the request of the shareholders does not meet the legal requirements and that it will therefore not summon any General Meeting.

"Every SIF has reviewed the requests it has received, I have no way of knowing if there have been similar requests, from the same shareholders, with the same holdings. The SIFs haven"t worked together in their analysis of the requests to summon the General Shareholder Meetings", said Ioan Cuzman, the president of SIF1, who added that, once he has something concrete to announce about the negotiations with Erste, he would do so.

"It is not about lack of transparency", Mr. Cuzman added.

SIF "Transilvania" also announced yesterday that the request of its shareholders fails to comply with several legal provisions, and said in turn that the directors of the company hav