Andreas Treichl, the CEO of Erste Bank and Nicolae Danila, the CEO at BCR, Romania’s largest bank, says that they are to list Erste Bank shares on the Bucharest Stock Exchange (BSE).
Erste Bank is already listed in Vienna and Prague. The second is that the Austrian Group will offer €6.5 a share to the BCR employees who hold BCR shares. BCR employees hold 8 percent of the BCR shares. This offer has a total value of €412 million.
At the same time, the employees may change BCR shares for new Erste shares at 6 to 1 rate. If the amount of shares cannot be divided by 6, the rest of max 5 BCR shares will be bought by Erste for €7.65 each, the same price which is paid to the state for the majority stake. In this case, the holders of new Erste shares have to wait one year until they can sell them freely in the market.
The Austrian group offers the following option to employees who choose to exchange the BCR shares for Erste Bank shares: They can sell immediately to the group up to 50 percent of the new Erste shares at a fixed rate of €45.90 a share (equivalent of 6 BCR at €7.65) and for the rest of 50 percent they have to wait one year until they can sell them on the capital market (Vienna, Prague or Bucharest).
The three options offered by Erste Bank for the BCR’s employees are valid between 1 and 24 November 2006, and the settlement deadline is 22 December 2006.