The sale of another 10% of Petrom should theoretically make Romania, the Bucharest Stock Exchange and the players of the capital market rejoice. The Romanian capital market will become a bit more visible and will be able to benefit from higher trading volume in the future, the budget will earn significant amounts, and brokers will find it less difficult to explain to investors what is happening with the Romanian stock market...

But, since we are living in Romania, things aren"t so simple! Any type of decision, be it economic, social or of any other kind causes a lot of ardently contradictory opinions and irreconcilable contradictions between the parties involved or even between the observers of the phenomenon. Having worked many years on the capital and financial markets, I can clearly remember the manifestations of egos of the major players and I understand the whole storm in a teacup that began over this new event of the capital market. I"ll make it clear from the start that I will not discuss the technical inconsistencies of the offering. All I am going to say about that is the fact that I wish that operation had been performed as transparently and with as much simplicity as possible. It is obvious that all the unclear aspects of the prospectus were going to be exploited by the opponents of the sale, by those who didn"t win the call for tenders to become the intermediaries of the offering, by the political opponents of the government etc. Which is why any legal or technical oversight in the case of an offering with such a domestic and international impact should have been avoided; unfortunately it wasn"t. However, statements made by politicians or analysts the likes of "a never before seen method for setting the price" (this is a method that is frequently used in Europe, one recent example being the offering of OMV) or "the amount that the state will earn pe