Warsaw (Puls Biznesu) – Grzegorz Wieczerzak, the former CEO of PZU Zycie, and a small shareholder of PZU, believes that the privatization agreement was not valid.
On October 16th, the court in Warsaw received a motion from Grzegorz Wieczerzak. The former CEO of PZU Zycie wants the privatization agreement signed on November 5th 1999 to be annulled. The file is against the Ministry of the Treasure and Bank Millennium which bought 10 percent of PZU in the first stage of the privatization (in December 2004, a stake was sold to Dutch Eureko). Grzegorz Wieczerzak is the minority shareholder of PZU (since April 2006 he has 13 shares) and of Bank Billenium (50 shares).
In his opinion, the law was violated in 1999 and the transaction when 30 percent of PZU was sold for below PLN 3 billion (EUR 771m) is not valid. 20 percent was then acquired by Eureko. Grzegorz Wieczerzak believes that the final buyer of the stake, i.e. the consortium of Dutch Eureko and BIG BG Inwestycje, a subsidiary of BIG Bank Gdanski, today Bank Millennium, was not the same consortium as the one allowed to take part in negotiations. BIG BG Inwestycje bought the stake, and not the bank, so the management did more than it was allowed to. Moreover, the other companies submitting their offers, i.e. AXA and Allianz, did not know that in fact the negotiations concerned acquiring operational control over PZU and not only the 30 percent stake.
(PLN 1 = EUR 0.257)