Parliament gave green light to Proprietatea Fund

The Deputy Chamber plenum has approved on June 23 an emergency ordinance for the Government to accelerate the procedures of granting compensations for the residences taken abusively by the ex-communist regime. 264 deputies voted in favour and one against. Following this vote, the Proprietatea Fund will be free to distribute the remaining dividends and could list its shares at the Bucharest stock exchange (BVB).

The law will go to the presidency for approval, after which it will be published in the Official Gazette.

Proprietatea Fund representatives estimate that the law will be featured by the Official Gazette in the second half of July.

„Immediately after the reinstatement of the law, a general assembly of the shareholders will be scheduled (end of August, beginning of September), which will include in its agenda the alteration of the act addressing taking over the Proprietatea Fund management by Franklin Templeton, deciding on the 2008 and 2009 value of the dividends and listing the Fund with the Bucharest Stock Exchange this year”, an FP communiqué shows.

In 2008 and 2009, the Proprietatea Fund had 1.19 billion lei worth of profit.

The Proprietatea Fund was created in 2005, as a solution to help compensate the ex-owners, whose residences were taken abusively by the ex-communist regime. The fund addresses those owners that can no longer receive their actual property. The Funds owns shares with 88 companies, most of them in the energetic sector.

On creating the Fund, the Romanian state promised to list the Fund (FP) in the shortest time possible with the stock exchange in Bucharest and on an international market, which would have allowed shareholders to easily put good use the titles that they received as compensation, but the listing deadline has been repeatedly postponed.

Mark Mobius, Franklin Templeton president, declared at the end of March that the Fund’s listing could take place in 2010, firstly in Bucharest and then in London. „If we start on July 1, I hope to conclude the listing by September”, Mobius declared.

Franklin Templeton Investment Management, headquartered in Great Britain, was registered with CNVM in September 14 2009, but on May 11 2010, the capital market regulation authorities licensed the company’s Romanian branch.