Franklin Templeton secures 2-year mandate extension at helm of Property Fund

Shareholders in the EUR 3.4 billion closed-end fund have approved on Tuesday a 2-year extension of Franklin Templeton’s mandate as administrator of the Property Fund.

The fund is currently waiting for an approval from the Financial Supervision Authority (FSA) for a secondary listing in London and a new share buy-back program on the Bucharest Stock Exchange, said Greg Konieczny, the fund’s manager, according to Reuters newswire.

The FP has stakes in 56 companies, out of which 18 are listed and 38 are unlisted. Its manager has been pushing for the appointment of professional managers and boards in state-owned companies, where it holds minority stakes. In addition, it has been calling for the listing of these companies on the stock exchange.

The biggest challenge for Franklin Templeton is to lower the discount in FP shares, which currently stands at 26.18 percent. Konieczny suggested that the secondary listing in London would lead to a further narrowing of the discount as the fund would tap into a wider pool of investors.

The FP would be the third biggest fund listed on the London Stock Exchange (LSE), with a market capitalization of GBP 2.25 billion, behind Scottish Mortgage and Alliance Trust, with GBP 2.9 billion and GBP 2.5 billion, respectively.

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