KB’s board of directors will resign on Friday, and a new BoD will be subsequently appointed by the supervisory board that will come out of Monday’s EGM, where Societe General will take over KB as a 60% shareholder. According to earlier reports, the new BoD will have five members (vs. the current seven), and will be composed of three Societe Generale representatives (including the subsequent chairman) and two of the current BoD members (P. Palecka, T. Spurny). Notably, Radovan Vavra, the current BoD chairman and CEO, is not to be included on the new board. Neutral.
Also, the Pravo newspaper says today that the Czech central bank, which recently conducted an investigation into KB’s trading in the shares of two companies, VSB and Ceska zbrojovka, has concluded that KB did violate the banking law in connection with the trades. This issue is not helpful for KB or its stock, but the case has been known and as such we do not expect it to have much impact.
(Ondrej Datka)