BILL ON NONTRANSPARENT BANK SHAREHOLDERS REGISTERED IN PARLIAMENT

The Moldovan parliament registered a draft law on amendments to the legislation, which concern the procedure of canceling, issuing and selling the share of banks of nontransparent shareholders. The initiative came from MPs Andrian Candu and Stefan Creanga, who registered the draft on October 31, 2017.

The proposed amendments to the laws On capital market and On financial institutions imply actions of market regulators and share issuers at share canceling, conducting new issue of shares and their selling. The amendments allow the Public Property Agency to buy shares of nontransparent stockholders, blocked by the regulator, with the right of their consequent selling.

The draft law says that the newly-issued shares instead of the cancelled are papers in circulation, which do not have the right of voting, do not give the right to get dividends and a part of company property in case of its liquidation. They neither can be proposed as investment into authorized capital of another enterprise.

The amendment to the legislation says that bank shareholders do not have paramount right to buy the shares issued instead of the cancelled papers.

The draft law says for example that the term of selling the newly-issued shares should not exceed three months since their placing for sale, except isolated cases, which are regulated by this law.

The proposed document says that the National Bank of Moldova (NBM) may extend the established three-month term for selling shares not more than three times and not for longer than for 3 months each time, if this is necessary for supporting the financial stability or in public interest or in case of appearance of a potential buyer on the shares, which were not preliminarily assessed by the NBM and whose quality does not raise grounded doubts at the moment of adopting the decision on term extension.

The money from selling the issued shares of banks is transferred to the specially opened temporary account. On the basis of the proportionality principle, the money from selling the newly-issued shares, except the accrued but unpaid sums of fines, selling expenditures, including fees, payments and commissions, are accrued on the accounts of former shareholders. These provisions are applied without damaging the application of the law on preventing and combating the money laundering and terrorism financing.

Experts and specialists say that the Candu-Creanga draft law in fact legalizes what the NBM and the National Commission for Financial Market (NCFM) have done with the blocked 41.09% shares of Moldova Agroindbank (MAIB) until the moment of their selling.

“The adoption of this bill simplifies the similar procedure for Moldindconbank with its 63.89% shares, as well as for other banks in case the regulator has complaints or questions to shareholders”, the Infotag interviewee said.

In the opinion of specialists, quick appointment by the parliament of this bill may mean that the state facilitates and simplifies investors’ access to country’s system banks MAIB and MICB, whose capital will soon get investors with high reputation in international finances.