* Florin Vlădan, OPSPI: The largest commercial banks are interested in offerings from state owned companies

The development of the stock market depends on the privatization of companies through IPOs and on the raising of the holding threshold in the SIFs from 1% to 5%, several investors said yesterday, in a press conference.

Adrian Tănase, Managing Director of "ING Investment Management", considers that the stock market, even though it plays a very important role, suffers from certain limitations. He considers that at this moment, there are few companies one can invest in, as all the management communities are waiting for the government to complete the listing of the stakes in certain companies, as agreed with the IMF. "The privatization of companies on the stock exchange represents a first step towards creating a higher number of instruments in which to invest", said Adrian Tănase.

Florin Laurenţiu Vlădan, the head of the "Office for the Participation of the State and for Privatization in the Industry" (OPSPI), said that, by the end of 2012, the OPSPI will put up for sale stakes of 10% to 15% in companies owned by the Ministry of the Economy.

He said that the OPSPI already has a legal consultant, an intermediary and the sale contract has already been signed for the sale of 15% of the shares of "Transelectrica" (TEL). The subscription will take place in February.

For "Transgaz" (TGN), only one bid was submitted last week for intermediating the sale of a stake of 15% of the shares of the company, by the consortium made up of "Raiffeisen Capital & Investment" (RCI), "BT Securities" and Czech brokerage firm "Wood&Co".

Florin Laurenţiu Vlădan said that the state in the first half of 2012 will repeat the SPO by which it wants to sell 9.84% of the shares of OMV Petrom (SNP), after, in July, on the first attempt, the secondary offer in "P