“We want the best price possible. We haven’t decided the price we will sell at, yet,” Ion Ariton said at the end of last week.
The government expects to get at least EUR600 million for the stake put up for sale, but stock markets have been highly volatile recently because of the Greek economy’s problems.
At the last bourse price of Friday, of 0.379 lei (EUR0.09) per share, Petrom’s market value stood at EUR5 billion, so that the 9.8% stake is worth EUR500 million.
Though the government has for at least two years stated it wanted to sell 9.8% in Petrom on the stock exchange, the process has been lagging behind, with the state, through the Economy Ministry, missing major opportunities to sell the shares.
The Economy Ministry, which has changed its minister twice in the past two years, chose the consortium made up of Russia’s Renaissance Capital, BT Securities, the brokerage arm of Banca Transilvania, EFG Securities, the unit of Greek group EFG and Romcapital, a brokerage of Timisoara, to handle the sale of the 9.8% stake.
According to the information available, so far the consortium has not officially presented to the government the sales method and how much it could raise. (EUR1=RON4.2291)