Page 9 - bne_newspaper_April_13_2018

The Regions This Week
April 13, 2018 www.intellinews.com I Page 9
Eastern Europe
Finland issued a second and final permit for the construction of the controversial Nord Stream II pipeline that is to pump gas from Russia directly to Germany via a Baltic Sea route.
The infrastructure is opposed by Poland and other CEE countries.
National carrier Ukraine International Airlines (UIA) is going to sue Irish low-cost carrier Ryanair over airport slots, UIA's chief executive Yuri Miroshnikov said in an interview with Reuters. Controlled by oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky, UIA’s Miroshnikov said Ryanair has started selling tickets for flights at Kiev’s Boryspil airport without getting permission for the timings of flights.
Russia’s largest airport holding Novaport postponed its IPO plans to 2019 at "the earliest”, the co-owner of the holding Roman Trotsenko said. It is not clear whether the decision to postpone the offering is related to the latest round of US sanctions against Russia.
Ukraine intends to obtain $2bn in loans from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and other donors in 2018, the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) said. The finance ministry will also place $2.5bn in Eurobonds in 2018, and $1.5bn in 2019. Ukraine needs to raise around $8bn on foreign markets for well-timed servicing of its debt commitments.
Belarus will spend almost $7bn on repaying
its external debt in 2018, the authorities said
at the end of March after updating statistics on external debt. The foreign exchange reserves of Belarus declined by $99mn to $6.995bn in March following a 9.5% m/m increase in February on the back of a new Eurobond placement, the National Bank of Belarus (NBB) said.
Russian watchdog Roskomnadzor turned to the courts to block the messenger Telegram in Russia, after the company repeatedly denied
Russian security services access to encryption codes.
Russia's leading container terminal operator Global Ports confirmed a previously reported sale of 30.75% of its shares to Delo Group,
an owner of container and grain assets in the city of Novorossiysk. The amount of the deal is undisclosed but in December it was estimated at $261mn based on the LSE capitalisation of GLPR of $774mn.
Russia's agricultural watchdog Rosselkhoznad- zor threatened Belarus with a potato ban if it keeps re-exporting Egyptian-grown potatoes as its own in defiance of a trade ban.
The National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) will keep its key policy rate unchanged at 17% after
four hikes of the rate, as "the current monetary conditions are sufficiently tight to bring inflation back to its mid-term target", the regulator said.
Russia's largest company Rosneft is pledging to cut its record-high debt burden to investors in an effort to improve its valuation as compared to global peers, the company said in discussions with investors in London. Previously CEO Igor Sechin argued that the fair value of Russia's largest oil producer Rosneft is about half of what it should be thanks to sanctions on Russia.
Ukraine's leading coal and power holding DTEK signed a contract with China Machinery Engineer- ing Corporation (CMEC) on the construction of a solar power plant with an installed capacity of 200 MW in Nikopol, the Dnipropetrovsk region, accord- ing to DTEK's head Maksym Tymchenko.
Russia's largest bank Sberbank continued
to post strong results in the first quarter, reporting 26% year-on-year earnings growth to RUB196bn under Russian Accounting Standards (RAS), making a return on equity of 23%.