Finance Minister Ionut Popescu is in need of cash to cover his personal expenses. With all the money he has being invested on the stock exchange, he intends to place a so-called discretionary sell order with Vanguard brokerage firm. This should enable him to gain the money he needs without specifying which shares should be sold and when.
"I believe I have already dealt with this issue more transparently than required by the law, making my entire portfolio public. I will issue a press release the moment I authorise the brokerage firm to start selling some of my shares to provide the money I need to complete a house under construction," Popescu said. He says the decision to "unfreeze" the portfolio cannot be suspected of any intent to influence the market, given that it will be done transparently and without his direct involvement.
At the same time, he dismissed the accusations that he caused the drop of the stock market on February 9 when his ministry released certain information about the 10% taxation of capital gains, which confused the market and gave rise to the suspicion that some players had learnt what it was all about before others.
Precisely so as to avoid fuelling comment on the market, Popescu has abstained from making forecasts for various macroeconomic indicators, even including the interest rate trend for this year, which the ministry can influence through the government securities market.
Despite all these precautions, speculation about the transactions of a minister who has proclaimed himself to be a "stock market fan" was fuelled by the fact that his personal advisor, Dan Marinescu, was a former employee of Vanguard, precisely the company that built Popescu's stock portfolio.
According to his declaration of interests as a senator elected in the autumn of last year, he owned a stock portfolio worth 15.9bn ROL (0.4 million euros) on December 15 2004. Popescu has had an account with Vanguard and has been a stock market investor since the end of the 1990s.
The most important stock held by Popescu at the time of his declaration were in Unirea Shopping Center (110,000 euros) and in SIF Oltenia (93,000 euros). Unirea Shopping Center shares are currently worth 110,000 euros since their quote has gone down in ROL and the ROL has gained ground against the euro. His shares in SIF Oltenia are worth 180,000 euros, double the level three months ago.
Popescu says he has not made any transactions on the Bucharest Stock Exchange since then, which means his portfolio is now worth 0.57 million euros. He therefore made a 42.5% profit in the last three months.
He did not catch the best moment to sell his shares, however, as the market dropped severely by 21% in the last three weeks. During the peak on the market at the end of last month, Popescu's shares were worth up to 0.75 million euros.
razvan.voican@zf.ro ; vlad.nicolaescu@zf.ro
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