* Transferoviar has been left in the station; apparently the bank hasn't given it its "ticket"
Grup Feroviar Român (GFR), controlled by businessman Gruia Stoica, is the only competitor left in the race for the privatization of CFR Marfă, after Transferoviar Grup, which was on the shortlist as part of a consortium with Austrian investment fund Donau Finanz GMBH & Co KG, withdrew from the process.
Even though there are still voices, maybe louder than ever which claim that the procedure for the sale of 51% of the shares of 51% of the shares of the railroad operator should stop here, to be resumed later, transports minister Relu Fenechiu has no doubts that CFR Marfă will have a new owner today.
The official told us: "tomorrow (ed. note:), at 11:00, I will open the bid and declare the winner. We only have one step left, but it merely a check".
He insisted that "the rules were not changed mid-game", like some experts claim: "The conditions of a privatization cannot be changed. We didn't change the terms. When we began the procedure we had a book for the presentation of the company. Because we were forced to do this privatization in an incredibly short time, basically impossible, we have conducted certain actions simultaneously. The documents which presented the company mentioned that the debts of the companies would be converted into stock. We did not touch the share capital, because the conversion has not been made through a share capital. We also didn't change the capital by transferring some assets from the portfolio of CFR Marfă to that of SNCFR and SAF, like the unionists told us, because we are talking about assets, not shares".
Economic analyst Cristina Chiriac says that the only manner to convert the debts of a company into shares is to conduct a share capital increase, and he went on to say: "We have had another attempt in Romania to
