In Brief
Deutsche Telekom deal goes to lawmakers next week Deutsche Telekom’s agreement with the Greek state to acquire a stake and management control of OTE telecom will be brought to the country’s Parliament for approval next week. The accord, which arranges for Bonn-based Deutsche Telekom and the Greek state to each have 25 percent plus one share of the former phone monopoly, will be submitted to Parliament, Economy Minister Giorgos Alogoskoufis said in an e-mailed statement yesterday. Deutsche Telekom, Europe’s biggest telephone company, acquired 20 percent of OTE on May 16 for 2.5 billion euros ($3.9 billion) from Marfin Investment Group SA. Under the agreement with Greece, Deutsche Telekom will buy 3 percent of the government’s 28 percent stake and another 2 percent from the market, bringing the price of securing control of Hellenic Telecom to 3.2 billion euros. (Bloomberg) Aegean Airlines reports net Q1 loss Aegean Airlines SA, Greece’s second-largest airline, said its net loss widened in the first quarter of the year on higher fuel costs. Aegean’s net loss in the three months to the end of March was 4.4 million euros ($6.8 million), compared with a 2.6-million-euro loss a year earlier, the Athens-based company said in an e-mailed statement today. Sales rose 23 percent to 98.8 million euros as the number of passengers climbed 10 percent, according to the statement. (Bloomberg) Bulgaria inflation Bulgaria’s central bank expects inflation to hit 7-8 percent in 2008, Deputy Governor Dimitar Kostov said on Sunday, with surging food prices driving consumer costs above the government’s 6.9 percent forecast. «We forecast 7 to 8 percent by the end of this year,» he said. Bulgarian consumer price inflation hit 14.6 percent year-on-year in April, after rising 12.5 percent in the whole of 2007, the highest annual figure since 2000 and up from 6.5 percent at the end of 2006. Bulgaria ended 2007 with one of the highest inflation rates in the European Union. (Reuters) Areeba sale Cyprus Trading Corp (CTC) has agreed to buy up to 50 percent of local mobile telephone operator Areeba Ltd from South Africa’s MTN, CTC said yesterday. CTC said the deal would see it gradually build up a 50 percent shareholding. The agreement was brokered with Areeba, which trades as MTN Cyprus, a unit of the South-African listed MTN Group, which operates networks in 21 countries in Africa, Asia and the Middle East. MTN has an estimated Cyprus mobile telephony market share of 16 percent. (Reuters)
