* The share capital increase may be postponed a year
* The management of "Petrom" will propose the payment of dividends out of last year"s profit
"OMV Petrom", the largest domestic company, last year made a net profit of 2.19 billion lei, up 163% over 2009, as the management of the company announced it would propose to shareholders the payment of dividends from last year"s profits, after a two year break. Last year, "Petrom" paid 600 million lei in royalties to the Romanian state, about 50 million more than in 2009.
The profit that "Petrom" obtained this year may cause the company to postpone its plans to increase its share capital, especially since the state recently began the procedures to sell a stake of 9.8% of the shares of "Petrom".
In the second half of 2010, information appeared that the state was planning to sell part of its stake in "Petrom" to raise money for participating in the share capital increase, but it was only last week that the authorities published the announcement that they were looking for an intermediary that would handle the sale of the shares of the state on the Stock Exchange. Aside from that, the mandate of the Board of Directors of "Petrom" to decide on the share capital increase will expire at the end of April, this year, and it is hard to believe that the state would be successful in selling off its stake of 9.8% in SNP.
Mariana Gheorghe, the managing director of "Petrom" yesterday said that a decision concerning the opportunity of the share capital increase will be made in the near future: "In month, the approval that we have received from shareholders to perform the share capital increase will expire. We will review whether increasing the share capital is opportune, by taking into account the financial results for 2010, the possibility of distributing dividends and the opinion of shareholders. According
