The Romanian President Traian Basescu has recently admitted that the state should have sold a stake in oil and gas company OMV Petrom for RON 0.33 a share, as the company's share price went down on the Bucharest Stock Exchange this week following turmoil on other stock markets. Basescu (in picture, right) said during a meeting with Gerhard Roiss, the Chairman of the Petrom Supervisory Board and OMV CEO (in picture, left), that “we start to regret” not selling the state's stake in Petrom for RON 0.33 a share. Petrom's shares, listed on the Bucharest Stock Exchange, are currently at a level of RON 0.31 per share.

The offer to sale 9.84 percent stake in oil and gas company OMV Petrom on the stock exchange in July has been postponed after investors have subscribed less than 80 percent of the available shares, which was the threshold to make the offer successful. The public offer was started with a maximum price of RON 0.46 per share, while mid through the process, the Romanian Government established RON 0.37 as the minimum price per share in the public offer. The intermediaries proposed a minimum price of RON 0.33 per share, 13 percent under the exchange quotation of the shares at that time, but the Government didn’t agree with this value.

OMV Petrom grew its sales by 23 percent in the first half of this year, compared to the same period of last year, reaching EUR 2.4 billion. The company’ sales grew by 20 percent, to EUR 1 billion, in the second quarter of this year, compared to the second quarter of 2010.

Irina Popescu, irina.popescu@romania-insider.com

(photo source: presidency.ro)