ECONOMY

In Brief

Eurobank raises 251 mln euros from share sale EFG Eurobank Ergasias SA, Greece’s second-biggest lender by assets, said it raised 251 million euros ($365.7 million) in a share sale. Eurobank sold 26.3 million shares, equal to 4.9 percent of all outstanding stock, at 9.55 euros each, according to an Athens bourse filing yesterday. The price is 3.9 percent below yesterday’s close. The sale to international investors was fully underwritten by Goldman, Sachs & Co and completed in a few hours, the company said. Eurobank’s share sale follows that of rival Alpha Bank SA, which said on August 31 it raised 73.9 million euros in the sale of its own stock to an unnamed institutional investor. Eurobank fell as much as 2.4 percent to 9.70 euros and was at 9.85 euros at 11.30 a.m. in Athens trading. The bank has a market value of 5.3 billion euros. (Bloomberg) BAE systems to go after deals in Greece, Poland BAE Systems Plc, Europe’s biggest defense company, said it is pursuing armored-vehicle orders in Greece and Poland that may help compensate for the loss of a Pentagon contract estimated to be worth more than $4.5 billion. Greece’s requirement may amount to thousands of vehicles, Alan Garwood, BAE’s business development director, said in an interview at the DSEi weapons fair in London. BAE said on August 27 that sales from its Family of Medium Tactical Vehicles program will drop to less than $1 billion a year from 2011 after a US Army contract was awarded to rival Oshkosh Corp. London-based BAE plans to appeal the decision, which it says failed to accurately assess the inherent risks. (Bloomberg) Industrial output Bulgaria’s industrial output fell 18.9 percent year-on-year, more than an 18.2 percent decline in June as the Balkan country battles deep recession, statistics office data showed yesterday. Production rose 1.6 percent month-on-month in July, a slowdown from a 7.5 percent increase in June, the data showed. Mining output rose 8.9 percent, while production of electricity, heating, gas and water increased 5.3 percent in July on a monthly basis. Processing industry output edged down 0.1 percent on the month. The Bulgarian economy contracted 4.9 percent year-on-year in the second quarter, plunging deeper into recession as the global downturn put an end to 12 years of growth. (Reuters) GDP shrinks Turkey’s gross domestic product shrank 7 percent year-on-year in the second quarter, the Turkish Statistics Institute said yesterday, less than a poll forecast for an 8 percent contraction. The office, however, also revised first-quarter data to show a bigger contraction – 14.3 percent compared to an earlier 13.8 percent – and revised down growth of 1.1 percent in 2008 as a whole to 0.9 percent. Turkey has been hard hit by the global economic slide. Domestic consumption has slumped and its export markets collapsed, driving industrial production down steeply. In recent months however, indicators have shown some signs of improvement and markets have rallied. The once-fast-growing economy officially crashed into recession in the first quarter of 2009. (Reuters)

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