Marius Murgu: "A sad day for former asset owners "

• "The listing of the Proprietatea Fund may only be a success for the broker community"

The fact that the shares of the Proprietatea Fund (FP) began trading at 0.6 lei/share makes yesterday a sad day for former asset owners, who saw their portfolio take a hit of almost 40% in just one day, Marius Murgu, the chairman of the Association of Former Asset Owners (AFP) said yesterday. In his opinion, yesterday, it was the not the former owners that sold their shares, but rather speculators that bought their shares in the "gray" market at prices far below the face value who wanted to take their profit.

"The listing of the Fund may be a success for the broker community, perhaps", Marius Murgu said ironically, and he added: "It wasn"t the former asset owners that sold their shares in the Fund yesterday, but rather investors that bought shares through the Central Depository at 0.2 lei/share and wanted to take some of their profits yesterday. Former asset owners still control a significant chunk of the Fund, they represent the majority among private shareholders. Who cares that these shareholders are becoming increasingly unhappy?", Murgu said, rhetorically.

Marius Murgu considers that "Franklin Templeton" should have done more to ensure that the price on the day of the listing would be close to the face value of the stock.

"I don"t understand why the first trades took place at a price of 0.6 lei instead of 0.9 lei/share. The manager of the Fund should take care to have the listing price be as close to the face value as possible. The price of 0.6 lei/share represents a serious issue and I don"t think even the people at Franklin Templeton realize what kind of consequences it could have", said Marius Murgu.

Mr. Marius Murgu also said: "Where are those investors that brokers that handled the listing said would rush in? Two weeks ago, an official who handled the listing told us that there was a huge interest in the Fund. Yesterday we expected the price to reach 1 leu. That didn"t happen.

I have already spoken to some foreign investment funds and they told me they would buy shares in the Fund later. But I was expecting foreign individual investors to show up yesterday".

He said that some of the former owners are considering suing the Romanian state and ask for more shares as compensation, if the price per share of the Fund after the listing falls too much below the face value of 1 leu.