In his announcement yesterday the Chairman of BOD of Bank of Cyprus rushed to reject the proposal of cooperation that the General Meeting of the Shareholders of our Bank decided to address to the shareholders of the Bank of Cyprus.
It should be noted that Mr. Ioannou does not know the content of our fully substantiated proposal in details, as he refuses even to discuss with us.
Obviously, he considers that the Shareholders that elected him as member of the Board had given him such a broad spectrum of authorities to represent their interests through his personal choices.Furthermore, the Chairman of Bank of Cyprus is making a counterproductive comparison of the efficiency of the two Banks on issues of strategy and profits quality.
It is impressive that he expresses a view about the quality of our profits for which he is completely unaware since our 1st quarter results will be released on the 9th of May, unless he makes the mistake to refer to FY 2006 when our group was not formed yet.
We suggest him patience for a few more days because his premature positioning will leave him once again exposed since we have already pre announced that our profitability, both in terms of volumes and quality of earnings, will be significantly above guidance.
Regarding the views he has expressed whether MPB or his Bank have a consistent strategy or not, it is not up to the judgment and the self-evaluation of the Board members but up to the shareholders to judge.
Our shareholders have unanimously approved the strategy of MPB.
The consistency of his strategy on issues of independent growth and the handling of the mergers with Emporiki Bank and Piraeus Bank will be judged at the General Meeting of shareholders of Bank of Cyprus.
Finally, the same General Meeting of the shareholders of Bank of Cyprus will decide on whether the management of the Bank has the right not to even discuss a substantiated proposal, which will be significantly earnings per share enhancing and it will be also beneficial for both the executives and the personnel of the Bank.
In our view and pursuant to applicable laws only the shareholders have a right to decide on such important issues and definitely not the Board of Directors that under the circumstances can possibly be influenced by issues of conflict of interest.