ROMANIAN MINISTRY OF THE ECONOMY: "We will go through with the public offer of Petrom so we can stick to the schedule"

The intention of Austrian company "OMV" to raise 900 million dollars from investors, doesn"t seem to interfere with the intentions of the Romanian state to sell 9.8% of "Petrom" (symbol: SNP), even though some of the analysts contacted by "BURSA" considered that the Ministry of the Economy would be forced to postpone the sale of its stake in Petrom until autumn, to avoid having the two offers cannibalize on each other.

"The Ministry of the Economy, Trade and Business Environment consider that OMV"s offer is an economic and business decision of a company that needs to satisfy the interests of its shareholders, and those who are most qualified to decide on the necessity of the share capital increase of OMV AG are the shareholders and the management of the company. The preparation of such a public offer is a process which takes time, resources and involves sustained efforts from the issuer, its subsidiaries and the selected consultants", the representatives of the Office For The State"s Interests and Industrial Privatization (OPSPI) said.

The newly issued OMV shares as a result of the share capital increase will start trading on the Vienna Stock Exchange starting with June 8th 2011, a date which is pretty close to the offer to sell 9.8% of "Petrom" (symbol: SNP), which is expected to take place in the half of this year.

However, the officials of the OPSPI have said that the state wants to go farther with the public offer in "Petrom", given the interest of institutional investors in the oil sector: "Considering the overall interest of institutional investors, in the energy sector, and particularly in the oil industry, as well as the fact that the shares of the two companies have long been trading on parallel capital markets, the Ministry of the Economy, Commerce and Business Environment will continue this process in order to stay within the established schedule".

The government has chosen a consortium which includes the Russians of Renaissance, BT Securities, Romcapital and EFG Eurobank Securities to handle the intermediation of the sale offer in "Petrom". Victor Cazana, the head of the Office For The State"s Interests and Industrial Privatization (OPSPI), has expressed his hope that the sale of the shares of SNP will be completed in the first half of 2011.