Mark Mobius Plans London Initial Sale for Romanian Property Fund in 2011
Mark Mobius Plans London IPO for Romanian Property Fund
Munshi Ahmed/Bloomberg
Mark Mobius said, “Hopefully the price will come up to the net asset value, but there is no guarantee.”
Mark Mobius said, “Hopefully the price will come up to the net asset value, but there is no guarantee.” Photographer: Munshi Ahmed/Bloomberg
Fondul Proprietatea SA, the Romanian property restitution fund, will sell shares on the Bucharest Stock Exchange early next year and hold an initial public offering on the London Stock Exchange by the end of 2011, Mark Mobius said.
“For the local listing, new shares are not necessary, for a London listing in order to be successful you have to offer shares because otherwise brokers would not be interested,” Mobius said in an interview in Bucharest yesterday.
Fondul Proprietatea’s shareholders approved the share sale and appointed Mobius’ Franklin Templeton Investment Management Ltd. as manager of the fund, whose value was 2.7 billion euros ($3.5 billion) as of 2009. The fund on Aug. 25 picked a group of three banks led by Raiffeisen Capital & Investment to manage its share sale, after a new valuation is carried out and announced this month, according to Mobius.
“The net asset value will be announced and then investors will say: ‘OK, that’s the value of the fund and people will begin to compare and then you will see trading taking place,’ ” Mobius said. “Hopefully the price will come up to the net asset value, but there is no guarantee.”
The Bucharest share sale will take place “at the beginning of next year once all the processes have been done,” said Mobius, who oversees about $34 billion and whose biggest are in Brazil, China, India, Thailand and Russia.
Fondul Stakes
Fondul Proprietatea owns stakes in 84 companies, including Petrom SA, Romania’s largest oil company, Transelectrica SA, Transgaz SA and atomic power company Nuclearelectrica SA, according to the fund’s website. The fund was set up to compensate Romanians for property confiscated under communism.
Mobius also said Franklin Templeton is interested in buying Fondul Proprietatea after the share sale.
“We would like to buy Fondul, but we didn’t want to do that now because we thought it would be unfair, so we want to wait until it is listed and then our fund managers all over the world can look at it and say: ‘OK, it’s a good price we’ll buy it,’ ” Mobius said.
To contact the reporters on this story: Irina Savu in Bucharest at isavu@bloomberg.net. Andra Timu in Bucharest at atimu@bloomberg.net.
Rate These Stories
Rate this Page