First clash between BSE and Templeton: Bucharest Stock Exchange wants FP all to itself

The listing of Fondul Proprietatea (Property Fund-FP) on a foreign market is causing the first cracks in the relationship between the management of the Bucharest Stock Exchange (BSE), which does not want a new listing, and American group Franklin Templeton, which plans to bring the Fund to London, Warsaw or Vienna, giving assurances the Romanian market would not lose liquidity as a result.
Since winning the management term in the summer of 2009, Franklin Templeton disclosed plans to list Fondul Proprietatea on a foreign stock exchange after the Bucharest listing, citing the need to make shares more liquid.
Among the Stock Exchanges announced as potential targets for the dual listing was the London Stock Exchange at first, while later managers talked about Warsaw, Vienna or even Hong Kong. Since the Fund was listed in Bucharest on January 25th, talks of a second listing returned to public attention.
“As far as I am concerned, I don’t want another listing of the fund, that is why I insisted that international trading mechanisms be introduced. Even if it were to happen, statistics show that in the case of a dual listing, the highest liquidity remains on the market of origin,” said Valentin Ionescu, general manager of the Bucharest Stock Exchange at a seminar organised by brokerage firm Intercapital Invest in collaboration with Franklin Templeton Investment on the FP listing on the BSE.
As of January 25th, the Stock Exchange introduced trading in global accounts for FP shares, share loans and short selling for FP shares, which the stock exchange operator wants to extend to all Romanian issuers this spring.
The listing of Fondul Proprietatea generated 662 million RON (155 million euros) in transactions in two weeks’ time, i.e. more than 55% of the stock exchange’s overall volume of trading since the beginning of this year.