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maximum capacity of 0.5MW, as part
of several projects across Hungary this year with European Union co-financing, the company said on August 29. The fol- lowing month, Matrai Eromu, controlled by Prime Minister Viktor Orban's proxy Lorinc Meszaros, approved a long-term strategy that includes investments
in renewable energy as well as energy storage.
In total, the Eurostat report finds that the primary production of renewable
energy within the EU28 countries was 211mn tonnes of oil equivalent (toe) in 2016. This represented a 66.6% increase in the decade to 2016, or an average growth of 5.3% per year.
However, it should be noted that wood, and other solid biofuels and renewable wastes made up almost half of that
total (49.4%). Other popular forms of renewable energy were hydropower (in second place with 14.3% of the total in 2016), followed by wind power (12.4%).
“Although their levels of production remained relatively low, there was a particularly rapid expansion in the output of wind and solar power, the latter accounting for a 6.3% share of the EU28’s renewable energy produced in 2016, while geothermal energy accounted for 3.2% of the total,” Euro- stat’s report said. “There are currently very low levels of tide, wave and ocean energy production, with these technolo- gies principally found in France and the United Kingdom.”
Invalda INVL fund – agreed to buy
a 41% stake in the country’s largest bank Moldova-Agroindbank (MAIB) after that stake was confiscated from “non-transparent shareholders” by
the central bank. The three paid MDL451.533mn (€23mn) for the stake.
“Moldova’s banking sector has
been plagued by non-transparent shareholders for too long. You would remember the $20bn money-laundering scandal, the so-called Moldovan Laundromat, and the $1bn theft from three key banks (12% of Moldova’s GDP),” says Francis Malige, the EBRD's managing director for Eastern Europe and the Caucasus. “But Moldova now proves that a turnaround is possible.”
The Vilnius-based Invalda INVL
group’s companies have more than €600mn of assets under management, entrusted to them by over 190,000 clients in Lithuania and Latvia as well
as international investors. Horizon Capital is a private equity firm managing funds which provide financing to businesses in Ukraine and Moldova. Its funds have attracted investments from the EBRD and other investors. Malige told bne IntelliNews that none of the partners dominate the ownership in the consortium.
The new shareholders are operating through UK-based company HEIM Partners, which is owned by the EBRD and Invalda INVL, with 37.5% of shares each, and Horizon Capital, which holds the remaining 25%. Horizon
is responsible for strategic direction
EBRD takes 41% in Moldova’s biggest bank MAIB as banking sector turnaround begins
EBRD takes 41% in Moldova’s biggest bank MAIB as banking sector turnaround begins
Ben Aris in Berlin
Moldova has been a banking black hole for more than
two decades. Tiny, poor and unreformed, the country has been used by businessmen from across the former Soviet Union as a willing banking base to launder money as the most convenient entrepôt into the European financial system. But that could be about to change, as Moldova follows the likes of
Russia and Ukraine in cleaning up its banking sector.
On October 2 the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), together with two private equity investment funds – Horizon Capital from Ukraine that used to be run by former finance minister Natalie Jaresko, and the Latvia-based AB
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