In Brief
Sarantis expects to miss its financial targets due to riots Sarantis SA, a Greek maker and distributor of household goods, said its holiday season sales will be hurt by the unrest of the past 10 days and doubts it will meet financial targets. «There has been a significant fall in sales,» the company said in a bourse filing. Sarantis said it may fail to achieve full-year financial targets as December is usually its busiest and highest profit-making month, the filing said. (Bloomberg) Turk Telekom submits initial nonbinding bid for Cosmofon Turkish fixed-line operator Turk Telekom said yesterday it had submitted a preliminary, nonbinding bid to buy Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) mobile phone operator Cosmofon. It said in a statement to the Istanbul Stock Exchange that it had submitted the bid yesterday. It did not provide further details. Turk Telekom announced on December 1 it had appointed JP Morgan as adviser on the sale of Cosmofon, which is owned by Greek company OTE. Telekom Austria and Slovenia’s Telekom have both expressed an interest in purchasing Cosmofon. (Reuters) T-bills auction Romania sold 619 million lei ($220 million) in three-month treasury bills yesterday, more than planned, at an average accepted yield of 14.23 percent, the same as in a previous tender on December 3, central bank data showed. The Finance and Economy Ministry had planned to sell 500 million lei worth of paper. Romania has said it plans to sell debt worth 3.4 billion lei in December. So far this year it has sold around 11 billion lei, mostly in short-term paper as yields jumped in the wake of the mounting global cash squeeze. Earlier in the fourth quarter, the Finance Ministry revised 2008 issuance plans to 12.7 billion lei, from 11 billion. (Reuters) Bulgarian finances The Bulgarian parliament approved yesterday the government’s 2009 budget based on expected economic growth of 4.7 percent, a rate widely criticized as unrealistic amid the unfolding global economic slowdown. The budget plans a surplus of 3.0 percent of gross domestic product, but also raises social and capital spending which analysts have said is aimed at boosting the government’s falling popularity before parliamentary elections next summer. The leading business association and the right-wing opposition have slammed the budget as unrealistic and have urged the government to cut spending as the global economic downturn and falling commodity prices will hit planned revenues. (Reuters) Airline traffic Total October passenger traffic for 31 European airlines rose 0.1 percent from a year earlier to 68.06 billion revenue passenger kilometers. A revenue passenger kilometer equals one paying passenger carried 1 kilometer. The October load factor, the average percentage of available seats that are filled with paying passengers, fell 2.0 points to 76.1 percent. The October available seat kilometers, a measure of total capacity, rose 2.7 percent from a year earlier to 89.40 billion kilometers. Figures are provided by the Association of European Airlines. (Bloomberg)
