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2 SEEL: Soviet and East European Law 1 (1991-1992)

handle is hein.parker/seelviela0002 and id is 1 raw text is: PARKER SCHOOL BULLETIN Columbia University SEEL SOVIET & EAST EUROPEAN LAW Volume 2, No. 1 February 1991 THE POLISH GOVERNMENT'S LARGE-SCALE PRIVATIZATION PLAN: A PRELIMINARY ANALYSIS Privatization Program (Program Prywatyc]/), Rzeczpo- spolita, November 21, 1991. The Government of Poland recently announced a comprehensive privatization plan, which it proposes to put into effect in the near future. The plan's treatment of the privatization of Poland's 500 largest enterprises (responsible for about seventy percent of the country's industrial production), draws largely, though not exclu- sively, on a framework drafted by these authors.' While the plan may undergo a number of modifications, its main outlines are expected to survive and be implemented. The Government's Plan Each of the 500 large enterprises will first be converted into a joint-stock company. Following this corporatization, ten per- cent of the shares will be given (free of charge) to workers, another thirty percent will be retained by the state, and the remaining sixty percent will be transferred to new owners with the help of privatization vouchers. The enterprises will be disposed of in several phases, with 150-200 to be privatized in the first phase. An appropriate number of vouchers will be issued for each phase, with one-half going to citizens (who receive one voucher each), one-third to the Social Security office (to capitalize the state pension fund), and one-sixth to a number of state banks. The state will simultaneously invite the creation of a number of private intermediary institutions; shares in them will be offered in exchange for vouchers. Citizens's vouchers will usable only for purchasing shares in the intermediaries; each person will have a choice among the intermediary institutions in which he or she wants to invest. The banks will be free to use the intermediaries or to trade on their own account. The Social Security office will have a choice of either depositing all or some of its vouchers in the intermediaries or creating one or more special pension funds of its own. I See A. Rapaczynski and R. Frydman, SEEL, vol. 1, no. 8 (October 1990), pl. Once the vouchers are transferred to the intermediaries, the companies to be privatized in the first phase will be sold to the intermediaries (with the vouchers to be used as means of payment) at a specially arranged auction. The state will also deposit its shares in the intermediaries according to some predetermined (but as yet unspecified) formula. The state, however, will not become an ordinary shareholder of the intermediary institutions; its shares will be apportioned to the intermediaries, and its role will be limited to appointing one director to the board of each intermedi- ary. The intermediaries will be charged with selling the state's shares in each privatized company to other investors, either by a private placement or in the open market, and once a certain percentage of the total state holdings administered by a given intermediary is sold, the state director will disappear from the board of the intermediary. cont'd on p. 2 CONTENTS POLAND: Analysis of the Privatization Program ............... 1 Andrzej Rapaczynski & Roman Frydnan Insurance Law ............................... 4 HUNGARY: New Privatizen Guidelines ........................... 3 USSR: USSR Banking Laws...........................5 RSFSRTax Law................... ...........6 RSFSR Enterprise Law.........................7 Referendum on USSR ... ....................... I I Decree on Economic Sabotage ....................... 9 1