Over 6,500 Romanians that hold shares in Erste Bank will be able to sell them on the Bucharest Stock Exchange from February 14 when the Austrian bank's shares start trading. Unfortunately, Erste's shares have seen a significant decline this year, after they fell below the value at which BCR employees swapped their shares for Erste shares at the end of 2006, and lost over 6% on the Vienna Stock Exchange. "Erste Bank has over 6,500 Romanian shareholders, most of whom are BCR employees who swapped their BCR shares for Erste shares in 2006. They hold little more than 1% of the total amount of Erste shares (namely 3 million shares), which will be available for trading from February 14," said Arjen Janmaat, senior manager with Erste Bank, who prepared the Austrian bank' s listing on the Bucharest market. BCR employees hold 500 Erste shares on average, and upon sale would collect around 17,500 euros each, after the Austrian bank's shares lost over 6% yesterday and dropped below 35 euros. The sum that BCR employees would now collect from the sale of Erste shares is smaller than the sum they would have received at the end of 2006, had they given up their BCR shares in exchange for cash. The three options offered by the Austrian bank to the BCR employees for giving up their stakes were: cash at a price of 6.5 euros/share, swap - at a ratio of 6 BCR shares per 1 Erste share, or swap plus cash, at a fixed price of 45.9 euros.
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