Romanian Govt. gives up appointing private managers at state-owned banks

The Romanian Government will give up the idea to appoint private managers at the state-owned banks CEC and Eximbank. The contracts concluded with independent recruitment experts for this purpose will cease, according to local Profit.ro. The Finance Ministry has already drafted the measure and will present it to the Government for approval. The procedure for appointing private managers at these two banks was launched last summer by the Dacian Ciolos Government. An emergency ordinance from 2011 provided that state-owned companies should be run by managers selected through a recruiting process. However, the Government has concluded that the two state-owned banks should be exempted from the provisions of this ordinance, which hasn't take into account the particularities of the financial sector, where the central bank also has a say in who runs local banks. Thus, the changes in the boards of CEC Bank and Eximbank will be made only by their shareholder, namely the Finance Ministry, in the General Meeting of Shareholders. In addition to that, the candidates need to be validated by Romania’s National Bank (BNR). The ordinance on corporate governance will cease to apply to the two banks, because if it did, it would result in a series of irregularities, according to the Finance Ministry. 70 people want to become board members at Romanian CEC Bank editor@romania-insider.com