Proprietatea Fund’s Hldrs OK Franklin Templeton Manager Contract – Sources

Proprietatea fund’s management scheduled a meeting on September 7 to approve the terms and conditions of the agreement with Franklin Templeton Investments, the offer, as well as its investment policy.

All the topics on the daily agenda were approved with 99.85% of the votes, a private stockholder said.

The Finance Ministry had some objections to some of the terms of the contract, as regards their formulation and not concerning the figures. These terms will be re-discussed, the cited source also said.

Also, Franklin Templeton announced the fund will be listed on the bourse in 2010, the stockholder added.

In a separate Extraordinary General Meeting held Monday, the stockholders will also discuss selling the fund’s stakes in three Romanian branches of Czech energy group CEZ.

Late July, the fund’s shareholders could not approve the manager agreement with Franklin Templeton Investments on lack of quorum due to the absence of a representative of the Finance Ministry.

Franklin Templeton was selected manager of Fondul Proprietatea on July 9, after it outbid Morgan Stanley Investment Management.

The Finance Ministry owns a 65.87% stake in Fondul Proprietatea, while the rest of 34.13% is owned by 2,491 private shareholders.

Fondul Proprietatea was established in 2005 to compensate Romanians whose properties were confiscated during the communist era. The fund owns shares in nearly 90 companies, including Transgaz, Transelectrica, Alro, Romgaz and several power distributors.