Company briefs - 2012-01-05

  • 2012-01-04

In the third quarter of 2011, foreign direct investment (FDI) in Lithuania fell by 443 million litas (128.4 million euros) or 34.1 percent compared to the previous quarter, reports ELTA. Meanwhile, compared on a year-on-year basis, the FDI decreased by 670.3 million, early estimates by Statistics Lithuania show. In the first three quarters of 2011, the FDI flow totaled 2.7 billion litas or 3.5 percent of Lithuania’s GDP. In Q3 of 2011, the largest investment flows in Lithuania came from Sweden (2.6 billion litas), Canada (1.2 billion litas) and Denmark (80.7 million litas), while direct investment from Estonia decreased most of all and stood at 2.4 billion litas.

The Bank of Lithuania has inspected the work of the Lithuanian branch of the Italian bank UniCredit and found a number of shortcomings, reports The Lithuania Tribune, referring to a Lrytas.lt report on Dec. 29. During the inspection, the validity of the account reports and warranties of the liquidity was checked. It included a check on inner control effectiveness and the correctness of the data entered into the loan risk database. The branch of UniCredit in Lithuania is owned by the UniCredit bank registered in Latvia. The Bank of Lithuania has announced that it will inform this Latvian bank and the supervisor of Latvian banks about the breaches found.

Swedish ABB has started to manufacture the 900 kilometer-long cable for the NordBalt power link, which will connect Lithuania and Sweden, reports The Lithuania Tribune. The cable will be manufactured in 15 months and will link Lithuania’s and Sweden’s power grids. “All measures planned with respect to NordBalt are being implemented as scheduled. We have announced international contract tenders, obtained all required permits, coordinated sources of funding, signed an agreement on the NordBalt and Nord Stream intersection, carried out the testing of the cable,” the press release quoted Virgilijus Poderys, Litgrid CEO, as saying.