Parex Bank acquired 5.29 percent of Wimm-Bill-Dann, the Russian dairy and juice giant. WBD officials said the block was most recently owned by Cyprus-registered I.M. Arteks Holdings, prior to which it belonged to Alexander Timokhins, a private investor, who sold it to Britain's Burlington Investments. WBD, set up in 1992, was the first Russian food company to be listed on the New York Stock Exchange. The company placed a $150 million Eurobond last year.
The Estonian food industry group Maag has started marketing Lithuanian turkey under the Rannamoisa brand. Ten different turkey products are on sale at prices ranging from 40 kroons (2.56 euros) to 100 kroons per kilo, said product manager David Parnamets. Refrigerated turkey has not been sold in Estonia since 1996 when the Jarlepa turkey farm went out of business. The poultry sold under the Rannamoisa brand is produced in Lithuania in plants that conform to EU requirements.
Lithuania's Security Commission has registered a 7 million litas (2 million euro) issue of one-year bonds to be distributed this month by Apranga, the country's largest clothing retailer. The company will distribute 7,000 bonds with face value of 1,000 litas each on June 11. The issue of bonds, bearing a yield of 4 percent and maturing on June 16, 2005, is managed by Finasta, the leading domestic brokerage company. Apranga will earmark the receipts for the expansion of its chain of stores.
Finland's Kesko Food and Sweden's ICA will continue negotiations on combining their business operations in the Baltics, although the validity of the letter of intent concerning the plan expired on May 31."The negotiations will continue in a positive atmosphere," a spokesperson for Kesko said. The aim is to unite the Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian operations of the two groups in order to compete with VP Market and European retail giants that might enter the market. The two sides expect to make a final agreement and start the joint venture by the end of 2004. Kesko has a large presence in Estonia, while ICA is strong in Latvia and Lithuania.
Sweden's Brovi Holding, the owner of the Eurolink hotel located on the third floor of the Riga Hotel, said it planned to send a letter to the Latvian Privatization Agency next month demanding compensation of around 1 million lats (1.5 million euros) in damages incurred by the company due to closure of the Eurolink hotel. It will be the first step towards filing a claim against the Latvian state with the Stockholm international court of arbitration, Brovi Holding co-owner and CEO Elisabet Akesson said. She said the company would negotiate with the LPA for six months, and if no agreement were reached it would turn to the Stockholm Court of Arbitration.
The number of fixed-line phone subscribers decreased by 5.6 percent in Latvia last year, whereas the number of mobile-phone subscribers grew 32.7 percent, a survey by Latvia's public services regulatory commission for 2003 found. In 2003 the total number of fixed phone lines in Latvia was 662,000, while the number of mobile-phone subscribers late in 2003 was 1.12 million. The number of phone lines operated by Lattelekom late in 2003 was 653,853, down by 6.8 percent over the year.
