With one exception - Mr. Siminel Andrei - the members of the Board of Directors remained silent when asked to express their opinions on the regularity of the "Petrom" Secondary Public Offering.

We hereinafter reproduce the opinion of Mr. Siminel Andrei:

"1. Interpretation of arguments: As a general principle, regulations need to be interpreted as flexibly as possible, to allow for operations which comply with the market requirements. Unfortunately, the case of "Petrom" was processed by the executive of the BSE, which reached mistaken solutions, such as forcing brokerages to "hand over" the clients of the intermediation consortium.

2. The policy of the BSE: The Exchange should have fought for guaranteeing a percentage of the offering for the non-institutional investors (individuals or companies) at a price with a relevant discount (10-15-20%) compared to the price offered to institutional/strategic investors, just like it was done in other countries, in order to support the stock market. Government policies (and the incompetence of brokers) prevented the creation of a strong stock market in Romania, and today, major companies, such as the Proprietatea Fund, are announcing plans to get listed on the Warsaw Stock Exchange."

We can note a hint of discontent in the opinion expressed by Mr. Andrei, who nevertheless avoids making a statement on the regularity of the secondary public offering, approaching it from another, exclusively functional perspective.

However, our questions concerned other aspects:

1) Article 189 of the Law 297/2004 stipulates that a maximum price must be set for the shares in the Offering, if the latter doesn"t include the price and the number of shares offered; even though it does not meet the requirements of this article of the law, because the number of shares of "Petrom" was not stipulated in the Secondary Publi