Company briefs - 2007-04-04

  • 2007-04-04
The Olympic Entertainment Group set up a subsidiary in Romania 's Olympic Casino Bucharest SRL 's to establish a foothold in the Balkan country's gaming market. Board member Andri Avila said Olympic will have a conceptual advantage over local casino operators in Romania. "At the moment acquisition talks are underway with several Romanian casino operators," Avila said. Olympic currently operates casinos in the Baltics, Belarus and Ukraine.

Danske Bank, Denmark's largest bank, acquired Latvia's Sampo Bank from Finland's Sampo Bank Plc, a Sampo Bank representative said. Danske Bank said it was planning to enmesh the Latvian bank into its single structure by 2009. The Danske Bank Group expects to spend 151 million lats (214.8 million euros) on fully integrating its Latvian, Finnish, Lithuanian, Estonian and Russian banks. "We want to ensure close integration of the Baltic banks into Danske Bank, since the Baltic market is very important to us," said Danske President Peter Straarup.

Lindex, Sweden's women's and children's clothing store chain, said it would open up to 15 stores in Lithuania in the near future, the first of which will be in Vilnius this month. "Our goal is to open 10 - 15 stores in Lithuania," CEO Goran Bille said. Growth in the Baltic clothing industry has been robust, and the demand in modern clothes and accessories was significant, according to the company. In the fall Lindex aims to open its first store in the Czech Republic. In total, the company intends to open 25 new stores during 2007. Lindex, established in 1954, runs a chain of 350 stores in Sweden, Norway, Finland, Germany, Estonia and Latvia.