Fondul Proprietatea shareholders approve delisting of London GDRs

The shareholders of Fondul Proprietatea (FP) approved, in yesterday's meeting, the delisting of global depositary receipts (GDRs) from the London Stock Exchange, according to a report by FP published on the website of the Bucharest Stock Exchange (BVB).

Each global depositary receipt is equivalent to 50 FP shares listed on our stock exchange. The details regarding the period in which GDR holders will be able to exchange them for shares, the effective date of the delisting and other relevant aspects are to be established by the fund manager, Franklin Templeton, as follows from the report.

The approach is similar to that of the companies Romgaz and OMV Petrom, for which shareholders decided to delist the GDRs, due to weak trading. After the delisting of the FP certificates, only Electrica will still have GDRs listed in London, but liquidity is very low.

Also yesterday, FP shareholders appointed Nicholas Paris as a member of the Board of Representatives of Fondul Proprietatea, for a period of three years, the other candidates being Sarkany Istvan and Marian-Cristian Mocanu. Nicholas Paris has been a member of the Fund's Board of Representatives since April 6, 2021, with his term expiring in April 2024.

"I am a qualified accountant and a member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales. I then spent almost 40 years working in the financial sector in London, where I specialized in analysis, advice and investments in closed-end investment vehicles, such as the Fund. This experience helped me enormously in the negotiations with the Fund's administrator, but it is also extremely useful in trying to establish a new future for the Fund after the highly successful Initial Public Offering of Hidroelectrica," says Paris, in the documents related to the FP shareholders' meeting.

The green light was also given to the redemption of up to 320 million FP shares during the next year, at a price that cannot be lower than 0.2 lei/share or higher than 1 lei/share. At a previous meeting, FP shareholders had rejected the Ministry of Finance's request to preserve the fund's assets and prohibit the redemption of its own shares.

Yesterday, Fondul Proprietatea announced that it had received two offers for the position of fund manager, namely:

a global infrastructure asset manager;

a European-based AIFM, in partnership with a Romanian asset management consultancy.

The Board of Representatives together with its selection consultant Deutsche Numis will evaluate the submitted offers based on the selection criteria approved by the Fund's shareholders at the General Meeting of Shareholders on September 27, 2024," the BVB report states.

Last week, Franklin Templeton, which has managed Fondul Proprietatea for fourteen years, announced that, after careful analysis, it had decided not to participate in the ongoing selection process for FP's Alternative Investment Fund Manager. The importance of Fondul Proprietatea on the Bucharest Stock Exchange has diminished considerably after FP sold its 20% stake in Hidroelectrica last year.