Page 8 - bne_newspaper_February_02_2018

8 I The Month That Was bne February 2018
Business
Eastern Europe
Russia's Sojuzplodoimport won a major victory in its decades-long battle with SPI Group for control over the iconic Stolichnaya vodka brand after a Dutch court upheld a ruling to give the name back to the state-owned enterprise on January 9.
Russia's state-owned natural gas giant Gazprom supplied 193.9bcm
of gas to Europe, including Turkey
in 2017, setting a new all-time high and exceeding the 2016 export figure by 8.1%. Germany remained the largest importer of Russian gas having pur- chased 53.4bcm.
Russia real estate sector is starting to recover after years in the doldrums, with the investment volume up 9% in 2017 to $4.6bn, reports JLL. Russia’s real estate investments reached $1.9bn in the last quarter of 2017, up 88% y/y versus $1bn in last quarter of 2016.
Central Europe
Hungary’s Opus Global and Prague- based EP Power Europe have agreed to buy the 72.6% stake held by Ger- many’s RWE Power and EnBW Energie Baden-Wurttemberg in Hungary’s second largest power plant Matrai Eromu. Opus is part-owned by billion- aire Lorinc Meszaros, mayor of Felcsut, widely seen as a proxy for Prime Minis- ter Viktor Orban.
The Polish parliament passed a bill that bans retailing on the first and last Sunday of each month. The pass- ing of the law – which still has to be reviewed by the Senate and signed off by the president – fulfils one of the leading promises of the ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party.
Central Europe’s richest man Petr Kellner agreed to buy Skoda Trans- portation, the Czech manufacturer of electric trains, trams and buses. The
price was not disclosed, though business news website ihned said it was more than CZK10bn (€400mn).
Southeast Europe
Ivica Todoric, the owner of heavily indebted food and retail giant Agro- kor, filed a case against Croatia with the European Commission for adopting the so-called Lex Agrokor – a law that forced a debt restructuring in 2017.
Romania’s Mangalia shipyard will be nationalised, Prime Minister Mihai Tudose said. The announcement came as a surprise as the troubled shipyard’s majority owner Daewoo had previously signed an agreement to sell its stake to Dutch Damen.
An explosion at the site of Austrian OMV’s Baumgarten natural gas hub temporarily interrupted gas transit to Italy, Slovenia and Hungary from Russia in December. The facility, about 50km northeast of Vienna, is a key link for Russian natural gas entering Europe accounting for about a tenth of the con- tinent’s supply.
Eurasia
Tajikistan’s gold production grew by 16.4% y/y in the first 10 months of 2017. The spike in output is in line with the official goal of increasing gold pro- duction to 17 tonnes by 2022. Tajikistan has 28 known gold deposits with total estimated underground reserves of over 400 tonnes.
Uzbekistan’s farmers fulfilled their contractual obligations to the state with this year’s cotton harvest, collect- ing over 2.93mn tonnes of cotton.
The country announced last year that it intended to cut its annual cotton harvest to 3mn tonnes of raw cotton by 2020, down from 3.35mn tonnes in 2015.
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