Page 8 - BNE_magazine_02_2020

8 I The Month That Was bne February 2020
Business
Eastern Europe
Russia’s piped gas supplies to Europe are slated to plunge to a five-year low in January amid warm weather and record volumes of gas in storage after Russia's gas pipeline monopoly Gazprom and other European companies stocked up on supplies last year to safeguard against a potential halt to Russian gas transits via Ukraine on January 1, 2020.
The "big four" Russian e-commerce operators AliExpress Russia, Wildberries, Ozon and Beru are anticipated to grow in 2019-2022 at an annual rate of 39%, outgrowing the market that is seen as expanding at 23%, and achieving a total market share of 39% by 2022.
The Ukrainian government will build at least 4,000 kilometres of roads this year – the most in the country’s history. Prime Minister Oleksiy Honcharuk said. The main project will be building a top- quality road between Kyiv and Dnipro, Ukraine’s fourth-largest city, and between Dnipro and Mariupol, a port city near the frontline with Donbass.
The winner of the concession tender for Olvia Seaport was QTerminals from Qatar, the Infrastructure Ministry in Kyiv said. The company has committed to investing UAH3.4bn (about $140mn) within five years
into the seaport and UAH8mn in local infrastructure. The company will also make a total annual concession payment of UAH82mn per year.
Central Europe
Estonian company Fermi Energia signed a memorandum of understanding on January 27 with Vattenfall, Fortum,
and Tractebel on developing the Baltic state’s first source of nuclear energy,
a so-called small modular reactor (SMR).
The first shipment of crude oil for Belarus is expected at the Lithuanian
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port of Klaipeda in January, local media reported on January 21. Belarus is looking for alternative oil supplies
to reduce its dependence on Russia amidst a spat with Moscow over the price of Russian oil in 2020.
Czech online grocery shop Rohlik. cz posted an increase in its revenues by 60% year on year to more than CZK4bn (€159.2mn) in 2019, with
a growth of EBITDA to CZK201mn (€8mn), according to the company's press release, daily Hospodarske Noviny reported on January 21.
Czech brewery Pivovary Staropramen Group operating Staropramen
in Smichov and Ostrava brewery Ostravar posted a heavy loss of CZK3.1bn (€122.7mn) in 2018, according to the annual report published in January, the Czech News Agency (CNA) reported on January 8. The volume of products and goods sold increased by 110,000 hectolitres to 5.41mn hectolitres.
Southeast Europe
A Burger King restaurant in Slovenia has started accepting payments in Bitcoin Cash (BCH), making it the first restaurant of the chain to carry out transactions in the cryptocurrency, a video posted on social media showed on December 20.
Romanian state bank Eximbank paid €61mn for 99.28% in the local subsidiary of the National Bank of Greece (NBG), Banca Romaneasca, while the capital of the Greek bank’s
subsidiary was €130mn, “accounting for a 0.4x multiple.”
Austro-Romanian oil producer
OMV Petrom has begun seeking
a buyer for its assets in Kazakhstan. The Romanian arm of Austria’s OMV operates the Tasbulat concession
area, containing three oilfields, in Kazakhstan’s western Mangistau region, along with the nearby Komsomolskoye oil deposit.
The Spanish banking group BBVA has put up for sale Garanti Bank Romania, a bank that it holds via its near-50% stake in Garanti Bank Turkey, Ziarul Financiar daily reported. Garanti Bank Romania
is a universal bank in Romania, with a particular focus on financing SMEs.
Eurasia
Kazakhstan produced 50,447 cars
in 2019 (+55.8% year on year), Kazakh car manufacturers union KazAutoProm said a statement. Kazakh cars are manufactured by Azia Avto in East Kazakhstan Region and Saryarka AvtoProm in Kostanay Region. Car production in Kazakhstan surged by 78.8% y/y to 30,000 units in 2018.
The Romanian state said it has taken steps to reopen the $600mn case against Kazakh-owned local company Rompetrol Rafinare, the owner of
the largest oil refinery in Romania, Petromidia. The case was related to
a historic debt of $600mn that the Petromidia refinery had to repay to the Romanian state, dating back from the refinery’s privatisation in 2000.
Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev said that Uzbekistan will gradually reduce the government’s role in cotton and wheat trading in order
to open up opportunities for private companies in one of the world’s top cotton producing countries and Central Asia’s most populous nation.
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