Fondul Propietatea shares up 46.5 percent since the beginning of this year

Franklin Templeton Investment Management Limited Bucharest Branch, the sole director and fund manager of Fondul Proprietatea announced today that the fund share price reached on Monday this week a record high level of RON 0.8050 (closing price) and is up 46.5 percent since the beginning of the year.

2013-11-05 15:29:05

Greg Konieczny, Fund Manager of Fondul Proprietatea, commented: We are particularly pleased that we have delivered substantial returns both to existing and new shareholders of the Fund through the share price appreciation and high dividend payments. Since the start of our mandate, we have paid approximately EUR 600 million in dividends, or roughly RON 0.20 per share. This means that a shareholder who received the Fund's shares as compensation prior to listing, based on a valuation of 1 RON, now can sell FP shares at over 0.8050 RON, recovering a total value of more than 1 RON per share.

Individuals who received shares as compensation following the Fund's listing will have benefited even more from this share price appreciation: given that the restitution process through Fondul Proprietatea shares ended in 2011, when the average trading price of the shares was RON 0.5105, this translates to a 57.6 percent gain for these shareholders.

Launched in December 2005, Fondul Proprietatea was established to compensate Romanians whose properties were confiscated by the former communist government. An international tender was announced in December 2008, and Franklin Templeton Investments officially took over as investment manager and sole administrator of the Fund on 29 September 2010. The Fund is a closed-end investment company with the investment objective of long-term capital appreciation through via investment primarily in Romanian equity securities.

Franklin Templeton established an office in Bucharest in May 2010, with a team of 27 employees, including 6 locally based investment professionals who are further supported by the over 40 portfolio managers and analysts of the wider Templeton Emerging Markets team.