"It is hard to imagine the state of local capital market in the absence of Fondul Proprietatea," said today Lucian Anghel, chief economist of Banca Comerciala Romana and chairman of the Board of Directors of the Bucharest Stock Exchange (BVB), within the conference announcing the 2 year aniversary since listing of Fondul Proprietatea on Bucharest Stock Exchange.
According to estimations delivered by BVB officials, some EUR 750 million have been invested by foreign institutional investors in shares managed by Fondul Proprietatea at two years since listing.
"The overall context is not helping and there are again talks regarding economy stagnation so that, every Government's mission is very difficult if not even impossible. That is why we are on our own and we should seek financing and growth solution from within," said Anghel.
According to the manager, a fifth of the overall turnover attained by the companies operating in Romania is accomplished by state-owned companies so that, the stakes of their privatizations are high. "Increasing the transparency of state companies, and putting in place a professional management sustained also by financial support has to be a priority," Lucian Anghel stated.
Also, Greg Konieczny, vicepresident of Templeton Emerging Markets Group and manager of Fondul Proprietatea stated: „When we started to manage the Fund, two years ago, our next focus was to change the state companies' approach of management, The process was not free of challenges but we tried gard to lobby and bring to the public eyes some major aspects as corporative governance, privatizations by listings and professional management."
The manager underlines the need to reform the state companies. " Succes of the fund depends very much on reforming process of state companies. We are dissapointed by the lack of progress of listings schedule for state companies and the program of establisgment of a professional management and independent Boards to state companies, according to the GO 109/ 2011. We hope the Goverment to speed these reforms."
According to data published by Fondul Proprietatea and uttered by Greg Konieczny, the Fund posted posotive results in 2012. Hence, the share price increased with 38 percent in 2012 while NAV (net asset value) increased by 9 percent. More, in January this year, the share price, adjusted to the value of paid dividents, records the highest value so far.
