ANRP: "We are working on issuing stock conversion deeds for the Proprietatea Fund"

• Varujan Vosganian: "The state will try to delay the granting of shares to the former owners"

The National Authority for the Restitution of Properties (ANRP) has announced that it has begun working on issuing new conversion deeds for the "Proprietatea Fund", pertaining to the briefs with requests for options submitted between January 11th to April 15th. However, for now, the Authority has yet to send even conversion deed to the Central Depository, the institution which carries out the transfer of ownership from the account of the Ministry of Finance to the accounts of the people entitled to receive stock in the Proprietatea Fund.

The ANRP later informed that 1.4 billion shares in the Proprietatea Fund, representing 10% of the share capital of the Fund, will be issued after May 2nd, the date when the issuing of new conversion deeds was scheduled. The process was however suspended on January 11th, prior to the listing of the Proprietatea Fund on the Bucharest Stock Exchange.

However, the representatives of the Authority have told us that there is no regulation that would require the ANRP to issue new conversion deeds within a specific timeframe after May 2nd, which raises uncertainty over the moment when the 1.4 billion shares, or at least part of them will come into the market. The issuing of new conversion deeds and the registration of new shareholders could turn into a race against the clock, as the date of May 16th was set as registration date for the payment of last year"s dividend for the Proprietatea Fund.

"We are not bound to meet a deadline when it comes to issuing the conversion deeds, but, the law stipulates that there is a period of 30 days from the time of their issue, in which we are required to send the conversion deeds to the Central Depository, for registration", the representatives of the Authority said.

Varujan Vosganian, former Finance Minister considers that the state will try to drag its feet in the awarding of shares to former asset owners, in order to avoid worsening its budget deficit.

He said: "Lately, the government has considerably slowed down the awarding of new shares because their value is part of the budget deficit structure, which is already big enough as it is. From now on, the Government will be less motivated to issue shares of the Proprietatea Fund as compensation, because their price will be calculated at 0.6 lei and that will mean that it will need to issue almost to shares per leu lost by former owners. This will very quickly exhaust the stake that the state has in the Proprietatea Fund, even as it already isn"t big enough to solve all the submitted compensation requests".

The representatives of the ANRP said that they are working hard to have the compensation deeds issued as soon as possible.

Meanwhile, the stock of the Proprietatea Fund has reached the lowest level since its listing, of 0.534 lei/share, amid expectations of increased selling pressure once the new owners receive their shares, according to Dragoş Dărăbuţ, of brokerage firm "Tradeville". He claims that the underlying fundamental data of the Proprietatea Fund hasn"t changed much over the past week, aside from the vote of the Ministry of the Economy which did not agree to the payment of dividends by Transgaz (TGN) (ed. note: the Proprietatea Fund owns 14.98% of TGN).

Yesterday, the price of the shares of the Proprietatea Fund rose 1.3%, to 0.545 lei/share.