Page 8 - bne_Magazine_March_2018

8 I The Month That Was bne March 2018
Business
Eastern Europe
Oleg Deripaska's Rusal is ready to play "Russian Roulette" with Vladimir Potanin's Interros over Norilsk Nickel. The shareholder agreement says either Rusal or Interros can offer a buyout of the other's shares based on its average half-year share price plus a twenty percent premium. The party receiving the offer can then either sell its stake or return with a counter-offer which has to be accepted.
Russian e-commerce market jumped 26% in 2017 to RUB1.725 trillion ($30.8bn) thanks to a post- crisis rebound in consumer demand and expansion of purchases via mobile devices.
Yandex is Russia’s most valuable
tech company worth $12.4bn. Rus- sian internet portal Yandex topped the ranking of the Forbes annual list of most valuable Russian technology companies. When the company floated in London in 2012 it was valued at $11.2bn.
Russia's largest carmaker Avtovaz
cut its IFRS net loss 4.6-fold year-on- year in 2017 to RUB9.7bn ($173mn) in 2017, the company said on February 15. Avtovaz’s revenues increased by 22% to RUB225bn in 2017. In 2017 Avtovaz was the top seller on the recovering Rus- sian market and in January-September became profitable on operational
level for the first time in five years.
Russia is KFC’s fastest growing market in the world. KFC’s sales in Russia increased by 24% year-on-year in 2017, KFC's Yum! Brands representatives in Russia said without disclosing the fig-
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ure. Russian operations account for 4% of KFC global sales.
Google sees 75% rise in revenue from advertisement in Ukraine in 2017
and increased revenue by 75% in 2017. Ukraine’s IT service exports increased by 7.6% last year, to $2.5bn, according to the National Bank of Ukraine.
The aircraft building and repair cluster of Ukraine state military con- glomerate Ukroboronprom increased the total net income from sales by 1.5 times year-on-year, to UAH12bn ($447.5mn) in 2017, according to the company's statement.
Russian steel mill Novolipetsk Metal- lurgical Kombinat (NLMK) reported its best profit results in eight years on February 20. The headline revenues for the fourth quarter of 2017 IFRS results were up 10% q/q to $2.8bn, above the consensus, thanks to higher prices.
Central Europe
Unions said Czech carmaker Skoda Auto was “spitting in their face” with its wage offer. The unions also threat- ened to boycott future pay talks if Skoda insisted on tying wage negotiations to what they said were “ridiculous” talks about an atypical shift pattern.
Southeast Europe
Romania’s natural gas transport grid operator Transgaz bid to take over Greece’s DESFA in partnership with Regasificadora Del Noroeste (Reganosa) and the EBRD. It has one rival, a con- sortium of Snam (Italy), Enagas (Spain) and Fluxys (Belgium), for the 66% stake in the Greek natural gas transmission system operator.
International oil major Shell will invest $42.5mn in exploration in southern Albania over the next seven years. It is estimated that Albania has oil reserves
of 220mn barrels and natural gas reserves of 5.7bn cubic metres.
Companies in Croatia’s booming tour- ist sector started recruiting seasonal workers from nearby countries such as Bosnia and Kosovo ahead of this year’s summer season. Croatia’s tourism sector has been going from strength to strength recently, with tourist arrivals increasing by 13% in 2017.
Serbia’s so-called “sugar king” Miodrag Kostic said he plans to acquire part
of Croatia’s troubled food and retail giant Agrokor. Kostic has been expand- ing his business across the region for
a couple of years, mainly in the tourist sector so far, but Agrokor companies would fit with the agribusiness side of his empire.
Eurasia
Azerbaijan's state-owned oil company Socar is negotiating an agreement
to explore oil and gas in Bangladesh together with its Bangladeshi counter- part, Bapex. Socar has been in an expan- sionary mood in recent years, building up its presence in several African mar- kets, in Europe and in North America.
Turkmenistan opened a new interna- tional airport in Turkmenabat city,
the administrative centre of the Lebap region. The authorities claim that the launch of the new airport will contribute to trade and tourism, but it is not clear how the government will pay for it.
Kyrgyz state-owned energy company Electric Power Plants (EPP) awarded the $104mn contract for the modernisation of Kyrgyzstan’s Toktogul hydropower plant to a joint venture between GE Hydro and GE Renewables. The project is aimed at increasing the reliability
of the national and regional power systems.