CEC Is Not for Sale Anymore

The small price offered by the participants is the reason for which the CEC (the House for Savings and Consignations) might be stopped. However, the need of keeping a Romanian bank is more and more present.

The Minister of Finances, Sebastina Vladescu, the chief of the CEC privatization Committee, is not satisfied with the preliminary offers and still analyzes the best offer regarding the CEC. "I am not very pleased after seeing the preliminary offers. I cannot say what is best for CEC today. At present, the commission is looking for the best offer", Vladescu stated for Ziarul Financiar. He says January is no longer a firm objective for submitting the final engaging offers for CEC.
Sources in the bank say that the fact that the Romanian state should be involved in the banking system is an opinion that is becoming more and more solid. The authorities think they should continue pumping important sums of money in the bank in order to consolidate its weak position in the last two years.

PERMISSION. Eugen Radulescu, the CEC president who was named to prepare the bank for the privatization, did not want to comment the minister’s commentaries. Sources in the bank say that the preliminary offers did not go over 300 million euros, even thought the market estimations reached 650 million euros. According to the document requesting the privatization offer sent to the interested investors, the Ministry of Finances, the representative of the Romanian state, the unique shareholder, has the right to stop the process at any time, if this is believed to be the best for Romania.

LOSS. Initially, the seven investors that remained in the race for the CEC takeover where requested to submit their engaging offers until the 28th of November 2005, but the deadline has been postponed without an exact rescheduling, because the finalization of the BCR privatization was very important. A simultaneous privatization would have meant greater competition for CEC and a greater price. The simple presence of Erste in the CEC privatization would have determined an increase in the offers. Actually, the unengaged prices are not of great importance since the participants in the privatization had no interest in making public the real prices they intended to pay. The potential clients are still thinking about the taking over of CEC. "OTP Bank is confident that the CEC privatization process is fair and transparent", is shown in the bank’s point of view. The quick and successful ending of the CEC privatization is important for Romania as well as for CEC.