Oil Terminal private shareholders claim damages

Oil Terminal shares on Friday were withdrawn from trading on the Stock Exchange after the Government in late January issued an ordinance transferring Oil Terminal’s assets into the state property and declaring it a company of strategic interest.

Minority shareholders deemed this decision as nationalisation and claimed damages. The ordinance thereby transfers the most important assets of the company (tanks, pipelines, pumping stations) without specifying the damages the company is entitled to receive.

If Oil Terminal had been a fully state-owned company, the transfer would have been no problem, it would have been just moving of assets from one state-run entity to another. However, in Oil Terminal’s case, the state owns only 61%, and the remaining stake is held by private investors.

Andrei Siminel, representative of Broadhurst Investment Fund, which holds 11.6% in Oil Terminal, says that he would settle for stock in another state-run company in exchange for the Oil Terminal stake. “As far as I’m concerned, claiming a compensation in cash would not be the proper thing to do, considering the effort made by NCH to bring more than $200 million in Romania over the past six years.

However, since we have obligations to our shareholders, I feel a compensation in shares is only natural,” Andrei Siminel, representative of New Century Holdings (NCH), the company managing Broadhurst Investment Fund, told Ziarul Financiar. Oil Terminal is the only Romanian petroleum company operating at the Black Sea. It has a pipeline system connecting its tanks to the Romanian refineries.

This system is also used by many chemical companies to transport their exported liquid products. The ordinance on transferring the assets to the state’s patrimony does not stipulate any damages to be paid and practically strips the company of anything valuable, because the most important assets were removed from Oil Terminal.