Fondul Proprietatea states on Salrom listing delay

Following the recent resolution of Salrom's GSM to postpone the decision regarding the company's listing, Mr. Greg Konieczny, Executive Vice President of Franklin Templeton Emerging Markets Group and Fund Manager of Fondul Proprietatea, made the following statement:

2016-01-19 16:03:33

"Sadly, the Ministry of Economy postponed again the decision on Salrom's initial public offering at the company's GSM held on Thursday, 14 January. Fondul Proprietatea voted in favour of the listing, but the Ministry of Economy, the majority shareholder, requested another delay for getting further clarifications from the company. Since Fondul Proprietatea has always strived to be supportive and constructive, especially on such a capital issue as the listing, we had to accept the postponement of the decision for a further GSM, rather than have the listing rejected by the Ministry, which was the second option for their Friday GSM mandate, in case Fondul Proprietatea representative did not agree with the postponement.

Fondul Proprietatea would like to underscore once again that this decision will only be the first step in the preparation of the initial public offering, which has numerous advantages for Salrom and its shareholders. Given the recent changes on the political scene we hope that the only reason for this new delay was related to the fact the new Minister, Mr. Costin Borc, has only been in office for too little time to allow him to make this decision.

Fondul Proprietatea strongly encourages Minister Borc to support this listing since it's one of the finest and simplest decisions he can take in order to make Salrom one of the most reputable company in the European salt industry which we think it's well deserved by Romania."