Property Fund receives approval to invest in NYSE securities

Newsroom 16/05/2011 | 13:05

The National Securities Commission (CNVM) has given the green light to the Property Fund to invest in New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) securities. The New York market is authorized and regulated by the Securities & Exchange Commission.

Property Fund shares were being traded on the Bucharest Stock Exchange at a price of RON 0.5 per share last week. In March the fund started buying shares outside local capital markets, when it purchased EUR 63 million of stock on the Austrian market.

At the end of March, the fund had net assets worth EUR 4 billion invested in over 80 companies such as Petrom, BRD, Transelectrica and Transgaz.

The Property Fund was set up by the Romanian government in December 2005 to compensate people whose assets were abusively expropriated by the communist regime, especially in cases where restitution in kind was not possible. Compensation was awarded by the granting of shares in the Property Fund, proportional to the loss. The government meets the value of compensation claims by reallocating shares from its holding to eligible claimants. It is intended that the government will over time become a minority shareholder in the fund.