* Former asset owners are getting ready to ask the state to give them more shares to compensate for the fall in the price of the stock

The price of "Fondul Proprietatea" (FP) shares yesterday fell to a new low of 0.48 lei, trading even lower than the last unofficial price of December 2010, at which they were exchanged at the Central Depository.

The fall of the shares of the Proprietatea Fund comes just as the authorities passed a series of measures which were intended precisely to avoid a steep fall of the price of the shares of the Proprietatea Fund, measures which, according to the National Authority for the Restitution of Properties (ANRP), could negatively affect the compensation process.

About two weeks ago, the Government passed a Decision which stipulated that the ANRP would be allowed to issue payment and/or conversion deeds when "a distortion of the market for the shares of the Proprietatea Fund would take place, causing the price to drop". Later, the ANRP announced that it asked the Government to allow it to gradually issue conversion deed for the 1.5 billion shares which will be distributed to former asset owners in order to avoid distorting the market.

A few weeks ago, Gabriela Anghelache, the president of the CNVM, said that flooding the market with 1.5 billion shares of the Proprietatea Fund would most likely cause the price of the stock to fall abruptly, and the goal of the Decision of the Government was precisely to prevent something like that from happening.

Still, the market invalidated the expectations on the reasons why the price of the shares of the Proprietatea Fund could fall: the stock continued to fall even after the authorities implied that the 1.5 billion shares would be distributed to the former asset owners, in order to avoid distortion the market.

Nicolae Ivan, former chairman of the "Proprietatea Fu