Petrom minority shareholders are committed to join forces and contest the Government's decision to split Petrotrans, the company transporting the oil products, and Petrom.
The split would decrease Petrom's share capital by 1,230 billion ROL, which is the value of Petrotrans assets. SNP Petrom share capital stands at more than 39,000 billion ROL.
"We have to do something so that the Oil Terminal story does not happen all over again. It is not fair that the state should take 1,200 billion ROL from an open company," said Octavian Dragolea, operations manager with European Securities, which manages more than three million Petrom shares.
According to the law, the decision to decrease the share capital has to be approved by the General Assembly of Shareholders (AGA). In Petrom's case, this is just a formality, as the state is the main shareholder, with a 93.22% stake held by the Industry and Resources Ministry.
Brokers consider that decreasing Petrom share capital without paying damages to the minority shareholders would be a hard blow to the Romanian capital market. "Who will want to invest a penny on this market?" Octavian Dragolea said.
Petrom shares were to resume trading yesterday, after they had been suspended on Friday following a decision of the general manager of the Bucharest Stock Exchange (BSE) Stere Farmache.
"We suspended the shares from trading in order to avoid confusion on the market," Stere Farmache said.
He specified that the shares were to resume trading yesterday as "I have received the release from the company announcing us what they were planning to do. The investors now hold the same information as the company does," Stere Farmache said.
"Petrom sources told me that the share capital decrease will not hurt the interests of minority shareholders," Farmache maintained. This would mean that the state's stake in Petrom would decrease by 3.06% to 90.16%.
According to capital market sources, World Bank officials and Romanian authorities have reached an agreement stipulating that Petrotrans, Conpet and Oil Terminal should be reunited into a sole company dealing with infrastructure activities of the Romanian oil industry.
Petrotrans has over 1,000 employees and manages more than 2,000 km of pipes used for the transport of auto fuel.
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