Page 5 - bne IntelliNews 26th May

The Regions This Week
May 26, 2017 www.intellinews.com I Page 5
Central Europe
Labour shortages threaten to weaken Central Europe's role as a carmaking hub, automotive industry associations from the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia warned on May 23. The worry is that a shrinking workforce and fast- growing wages will rob the Visegrad Four of their labour cost advantage. The savings to be made have attracted numerous major manufacturers, and the region produces around 25% of all cars built in the EU.
The Slovak prosecutor's office filed a motion with the Supreme Court seeking to dissolve the far-right parliamentary party Kotleba-People's Party Our Slovakia (LSNS). In the March 2016 election, the LSNS caused a shock by winning 8% of the vote to take 14 seats in parliament.
Slovakia scrapped a plan to spend €135mn on nine US-made Bell 429 military helicopters. Earlier in May, a Bell 429 GlobalRanger helicop- ter crashed in eastern Slovakia, resulting in the deaths of two crewmembers, due to what the interior ministry said was technical failure and not human error. The switch comes shortly after Bra- tislava approved a budget of €1.2bn for purchases of military vehicles.
Slovakia’s two largest alternative mobile opera- tors plan to merge. Benestra and Swan are the main alternative operators to the three major incumbents –Orange Slovensko, Slovak Telekom, and Telefonica Slovakia.
Czech President Milos Zeman finally agreed to dismiss Finance Minister Andrej Babis, almost a month after being asked to by Prime Minister Bo- huslav Sobotka. The premier has accused Zeman and Babis, billionaire leader of the Ano party, of working “in tandem” to destabilise the coalition.
The Czech budget deficit is forecast to drop to CZK50bn in 2018 from CZK60bn this year, said outgoing Finance Minister Babis. Prime Minister Sobotka has asked the new finance minister, Ivan
Pilny, to go back to the drawing board with his budget plans.
Pallas Athene, the controversial foundation run by the Magyar Nemzeti Bank, has purchased two heritage-listed buildings on the prestigious An- drassy Ut in downtown Budapest for €14.9mn. The deal further boosts the foundation's stock of real estate in its investment portfolio. The central bank came under huge pressure in 2016 over the use of huge volumes of public money by the six foundations it runs.
The US State Department reiterated that it will not negotiate with Hungary over its new higher education law, seen as targeting the US-founded Central European University. Budapest has said that talks with the US could help find a solution to allow CEU to stay.
Hungarian trucking company Waberer’s Inter- national is preparing for an IPO on the Budapest Stock Exchange in July. Private equity firm Mid- Europa Partners has now appointed Citibank, Erste, Berenberg and Renaissance Partners to set up the deal, according to the Financial Times.
Budget airline Wizz Air saw its net profit rise 28% to a record €246mn in its last business year, which ended in March. The result comes as revenue rose 10% y/y to €1.57bn. The Budapest-based budget airline added 113 new routes and carried 23.8mn passengers, up from 20mn the previous year.
Polish energy utility Enea posted net profit growth of 10.6% y/y to total over PLN321mn (€77mn) in the first quarter. Revenue dropped 7.6% on the year to PLN2.8bn in the first quarter.
Polish unemployment fell 1.7pp y/y to 7.7% in April. In monthly terms, the joblessness rate de- creased 0.4pp. The labour supply is being squeezed by emigration, a low participation rate and govern- ment policies such as a reduction in the retirement age that further shrink the pool of workers.