THE CODE OF THE EXCHANGE MAKES THE SECONDARY OFFERING OF "PETROM" IMPOSSIBLE Paragraph 6

The chronological allocation of the shares of "Petrom" sold in the Public Offering which began yesterday is not certified by any third party which oversees it, records the day, the hour, the minute and the second, as it would have been done had the entire offering been performed through the electronic system of the Bucharest Stock Exchange (BVB). Instead, all of these details are recorded by the members of the consortium - the four brokerages: "Renaissance Capital", "BT Securities", "EFG Eurobank" and "Romcapital".

As the managing director of the BSE, Valentin Ionescu, informed us, the consortium will not communicate the state the subscriptions daily, on the BSE. Instead, a single file with the list of the subscriptions, after the offering ends (on July 22nd, or earlier, if the consortium decided to end the Offering before that date).

The managing director of "BT Securities", Rareş Nilaş, has implicitly confirmed all of the above, when stating yesterday that the subscriptions would be collected daily by the shared system of the Consortium, which synchronizes the servers of the four brokerages.

However, this allocation mechanism violates the Code of the Exchange, which stipulates that the subscriptions need to be introduced into the system of the BSE for the duration of the operation, which would have ensured the certification of the chronology of the subscriptions.

Here is the excerpt from the Code of the Exchange:

• "Art. 66

(1) In the event of the allocation of shares based on special criteria it will be done based on the provisions of the present article.

(2) After the closing of the public offering or of the special operation, the BSE will make available to the participant, the orders inserted in the system of the BSE, during the period of the public offering or of the special operation and which are valid at the time of its closing, and will then withdraw all those orders from the system of the BSE.

(3) The participating intermediary will perform the allocation of the securities which are the object of the public offering or of the special operation, according to the provisions of the prospectus of the public offering or of the special operation, in compliance with the provisions of the prospectus of the public offering or the characteristics of the special operation, at the full and exclusive responsibility of the intermediary.

(4) After the allocation, the Participating intermediary will only send to the BSE the list of orders which will be loaded in the system of the BSE for execution. The orders will have the initial order number allocated by the system of the BSE, volumes lower or equal to the initial volumes of the orders and the price equal to the price at which trades will be executed. The total volume of the orders will be equal to the volume of the public offering or of the special operation in.

(5) The BSE will load in its trading platform the orders received from the Intermediary and will execute the trades pertaining to the public offering or to the special operation.

(6) The BSE will not load in the trading system the list of orders sent by the Participant unless the conditions of paragraph (4) are complied with. "

• (The Code of the Bucharest Stock Exchange - updated on June 1st, 2011)

We can note that, the way the operation is being performed now, the BSE is unable to load the orders received from the Consortium and will implement the provisions of paragraph (6).

In other words, it won"t load them.

(MAKE)

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• Disinformation at the offices for subscribing to the Petrom offering

Retail investors didn"t exactly beat a path to subscribe the shares of "Petrom" that the state was selling in the secondary public offer, even though "the time of the subscription" is crucial in deciding who will receive the shares in the end.

How lucky for the clerks!

BURSA contacted several dozens of employees of banks and brokers which are part of the consortium which intermediates the secondary offering of "Petrom", which began yesterday, by which the state is selling 9.8% of its shares.

Most of the people we called yesterday didn"t know too much about the offering, as some of them told us to check the websites of their employers, whereas others told us to come back in a few days. Some of the agencies told us that the price that we could buy shares in "Petrom" at was 0.46 lei/share, without mentioning that this was actually the highest price.

Some of those we asked told us that it was no rush: "On the first day, we had almost no subscribers", while others told us that there were no lines of subscribers.

And yet, wasn"t it supposed to be, "first come, first served"?! Not really! In a certain city of Moldova, we were told that the agency did not yet have the necessary password and therefore could not receive all the forms, meaning that we couldn"t subscribe even if we wanted to.

Those thinking of going to the offices of CEC Bank need to know one thing: "Avoid Thursdays and Fridays, because that"s when they"re paying pensions".

Even though subscriptions take place every day, between 9:00-16:00, clerks take subscriptions at their own discretion. Some only take subscriptions up to 15:30, some do so until 17:30.

The employers of another "intermediary" told us that this offering was only intended for large investors.

(ADINA ARDELEANU)