The Proprietatea Fund will distribute 95% of its profit to shareholders in the form of dividends

The Proprietatea Fund will distribute to shareholders a dividend of 0.03141 lei/share, double the initial proposal, according to the decision of shareholders reached in yesterday"s General Shareholder Meeting. Thus, dividends paid out will amount to 432.7 million lei, or 95% of the preliminary net profit for 2010, which stood at 456.2 million lei (108.3 million Euros).

The doubling of the dividend was requested by the Romanian Ministry of Finance.

The shareholders have kept the registration date proposed by the manager of the Fund, Franklin Templeton, namely May 16th.

At the end of March, 125 investment funds and foreign companies held 20.4% of the shares of the Proprietatea Fund, and 310 non-resident individual investors owned 8.66%. A block of 28.28% of the shares was owned by 7.744 Romanian individual shareholders, and 287 investment funds and Romanian companies owned 5.87%.

The stake of the state has remained unchanged at 36.79%, as the process for compensation by distributing shares in the fund has been suspended until the beginning of May.

• The Romanian government has appointed two members on the Board of Directors

Simion Dorin Rusu, personal advisor to the Minister of the Economy and Finance, and Doru-Petru Dudaş, managing director in the Ministry of Public Finance, were elected as members on the Board of Directors of the Proprietatea Fund, in the place of lawyer Corin Trandafir and of Monica Maurer-George, who was dismissed at the request of the Ministry of Public Finance.

Corin Trandafir served as the proxy to the heirs of the Malaxa and Auschnitt families and he resigned on April 13th.

The Ministry of Finance, which is the majority shareholder of the Proprietatea Fund, had proposed three candidates for the two seats on the Board of Directors of the Proprietatea Fund, but it withdrew the candidacy of Daniel Povîrnaru, advisor to the cabinet of a secretary of state in the Ministry of Public Finance.

The list of those who have registered for the competition to gain a seat on the Board of Directors of the Proprietatea Fund include Laviniu Beze, the president of the Association of Capital Market Investors, Eugen Brădean, deputy director at "Electrica" SA, Daniel Panca, cashier with a LLC with its registered office in Focşani, and Florentin Timoianu, lawyer, running on behalf of Palade Van Dussen Georgia.

The structure of the Board of Directors - four members and a president, the secretary of state from the Ministry of Finance, Bogdan Drăgoi - was established last year. The Committee serves the function of overseeing the general operations of the manager of the Proprietatea Fund (Franklin Templeton), and is liable to shareholders. Some of its functions include the approval of the financial statements of the Fund and of the annual revenue and expense budget.

• The listing of the Proprietatea Fund on a foreign stock exchange would involve a secondary offer

By the end of June, Franklin Templeton, the manager of the Proprietatea Fund, will make a recommendation to shareholders concerning listing the Fund on a foreign stock market, Greg Konieczny, the manager of the Proprietatea Fund said. "We will decide then on whether to list the Fund on another stock exchange or to keep only on the BSE", he said, and he added: "We are talking to a number of investment banks concerning a new potential listing. We are considering the exchanges of London, Warsaw or Vienna".

Konieczny explained that Franklin Templeton is not considering the listing on a foreign stock market through an IPO because the success of such an operation depends on the difference between the price of the offer and the trading price, which represents a discount for investors: "There are three alternatives - have the state sell its own shares, have an institutional investor purchase shares, or rethink the share buyback program (of a maximum of 10% of the shares of the Proprietatea Fund ed. note.)".