Eesti in brief - 2010-10-28

Statistics Estonia has provided an overview about life in Estonia during one typical day to mark World Statistics Day. During one statistical day, the following events took place in Estonia in 2009: 43 children were born, of which 21 were girls and 22 boys. 44 people died. 15 marriages and 9 divorces were registered. 13 people emigrated from Estonia and 11 immigrated to Estonia. The number of people attending a museum was 6,107, the theatre - 2,394 and the cinema - 4,715. 5,882 tourists stayed in accommodation establishments, of which 2,100 were domestic and 3,782 foreign tourists. 90,255 passengers used buses, trolley-buses or trams in internal road transport. Four traffic accidents with casualties occurred. 4.7 million mobile calls were made and 600,548 sms’s were sent. 132 offenses were registered, of which 65 were thefts and 3 drug offenses. 23 fires took place.

Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II bestowed to Estonian ballet dancers Toomas Edur and Age Oks, the Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) for their contribution to the British art world and for developing cultural relations between Great Britain and Estonia, Postimees Online reports. “CBEs are granted very seldom, especially to foreigners, thus this is a very big honor,” said Edur, adding that as far as he knows no other Estonians have received the order before. Age Oks and Toomas Edur danced in the English National Ballet for nearly 20 years. Currently Edur works as the artistic director of the Estonian National Ballet and Oks is his assistant.

The value of Estonia’s 100 largest companies grew in a year by 15 percent to 151 billion kroons (9.6 billion euros), according to investment bank Gild Corporate Finance who compiled the list. Top of the list, the most valuable company was Swedbank, with an equity capital market value of 22.6 billion kroons, as of the end of 2009. Second place went to Eesti Energia, last year’s winner, with 18.6 billion kroons, and third place belonged to Eesti Telekom with 12.8 billion kroons. The top ten also included SEB (6.0 billion kroons), Tallinna Sadam (4.2), Tallink Grupp (3.9), BLRT Grupp (3.8), Elisa Eesti (3.3), G4S Baltics (3.2) and Tallinna Vesi (3.1). Last year the value of the top 100 companies fell a whole 55 percent.