Vimetco postpones the secondary public offering of Alro Slatina on the BSE

Aluminium producer Vimetco will postpone the secondary public offering (SPO) of Alro Slatina shares on the Bucharest Stock Exchange (BSE), “due to adverse market conditions”, the group announced on Friday. “The company believes it is not in the best interests of Alro or its shareholders to proceed with an SPO at this point in time”, Vimetco said in a note to its shareholders. Vimetco, which is registered in the Netherlands and listed on the London Stock Exchange, announced in May that it wanted to sell up to 21 percent of its shares in Romanian aluminium producer Alro Slatina. Vimetco, the owner of approximately 84.19 percent of Alro' shares said then it may conduct the SPO together with its indirect subsidiary Conef, a minority shareholder of Alro, which owns approximately 3.77 percent of the company's shares. Both Vimetco and Conef are controlled by Russian businessman Vitaliy Machitski. Alro's shares are listed on the Bucharest Stock Exchange and were traded at RON 3.73 on Friday. At this price, the company has a market capitalization of almost EUR 630 million, so the SPO would have raised EUR 130 million for Vimetco. Vimetco also announced some changes in its management on Friday. Alro's managing director, Gheorghe Dobra, was promoted as acting CEO of Vimetco. The former CEO, Frank Mueller remained in the group and was appointed Managing Director for Production and Development of Value-Added Products. Vimetco is a global, vertically integrated producer of primary and processed aluminium products with major production assets in Romania, Sierra Leone and China. The group has an aluminium production capacity of 1.1 million tones per year. editor@romania-insider.com