Romanian Cotton Fibres Maker UTA Buys 13.7% Stake in Real Estate Firm Imotrust for 3.98 Mln Lei (1.1 Mln Euro)

UTA acquired on Thursday a total of 42,341,400 Imotrust shares at a price of 0.094 lei per share, IFB Finwest said in a statement.

A total of 43,086,300 Imotrust shares changed hands for 4.05 million lei in 141 transactions on the Romanian over-the-counter market RASDAQ, bourse data showed on Thursday. The average price was recorded at 0.0941 lei per share.

Data from the Central Depository showed that as of June 30, Romanian company Laicom Invest was the biggest single shareholder with a 20.8% stake in Imotrust; another Romanian company, Grup Codlea, held 18.74% and smaller investors owned the remainder.

Imotrust (www.imotrustarad.ro) operates on Romania's real estate, industrial and civil construction markets. It reported a net profit of 18.04 million lei in the first half of 2008, compared to a net profit of 2.19 million lei a year earlier. Its shares closed down 16.35% at 0.0834 lei on RASDAQ on Friday.

UTA shares were last traded on September 24 at 4.34 lei per share, up 55% from the previous close. The company reported a net profit of 1.82 million lei in the first half of 2008, compared to a net profit of 274,237 lei a year earlier.

(1 euro = 3.6578 Romanian lei)