In Brief
Titan Cement to pay $235 mln for US concrete firm Listed cement firm Titan will pay $235 million (-177 million), plus working capital, to buy US concrete company S&W Ready Mix as part of plans to expand further into the North American market, Titan said yesterday. Titan agreed to buy 100 percent of S&W, which generated earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) of about $48 million for 2006, Titan said in a statement. S&W operates 26 ready-mix plants in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, and Wilmington, North Carolina, boosting Titan’s expansion program in North Carolina, it said. Titan already operates a cement plant in Roanoke, Virginia, a cement import terminal in Norfolk, as well as other ready-mix concrete plants and fly ash processing businesses in the US. It also has operations in Greece, Serbia, Bulgaria, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and Egypt. (Reuters) KazMunaiGaz expected to join Turkish refinery project Kazakh natural gas firm KazMunaiGaz will join a $4.9 billion project to build a refinery in the Turkish Mediterranean port of Ceyhan, industry sources said yesterday. It was not clear what role the Kazakh company would have in the project. Calik Energy and Indian Oil have already applied to the Turkish energy markets watchdog to construct the 300,000-barrels-per-day refinery at the mouth of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline. «KazMunaiGaz has shown interest and they will participate,» said one source close to the deal. Another source said the deal could be signed in late April. The oil export hub of Ceyhan is also the terminal for a pipeline from Iraq’s Kirkuk oilfields. The refinery is planned to supply both foreign and domestic markets. Turkey’s Energy Market Regulatory Authority (EPDK) must approve the plan before construction begins and is expected to do so within a month, a source said. (Reuters) Korres IPO The binding price range for the initial public offering of Greek natural beauty products retailer Korres was set at -6.0 to -7.2 a share, the firm said yesterday. Korres, which is going public from today until Thursday, will issue 1.6 million shares, 75,000 of which will be privately placed. Last week, it said it expects to raise about -12 million to boost expansion abroad and pay down debt. Korres will be listed on the Athens bourse’s medium- and small-cap index from April 12. It has estimated its 2006 net profit reached -2.8 million on sales of -26.9 million. (Reuters) Garanti deal Eureko group, owner of Greek insurer Interamerican, and Turkish bank Garanti Bankasi, announced a deal for exclusive insurance cooperation, according to which Eureko will obtain 80 percent of the insurance activity of Garanti apart from the latter’s life insurance branch. Nokia in Romania Nokia signed a deal yesterday with the Romanian government to open a cell phone production facility in Transylvania, the company said. Nokia plans to invest -60 million in the plant near Cluj. It selected this area for the plant because of its pool of skilled labor, its good logistics connections and its industrial tradition. (AP)
