News Parkiet

Insurance

Eyebrows raised

over Agropolisa?s purchases

Former farm insurer Agropolisa made about 2 million zloty worth of dubious purchases and subsidies recently, sources close to the situation told PARKIET last week. Now known as Warta Finance, part of KBC group?s Warta insurance group, Agropolisa kept buying expensive office furniture, oriental rugs used as gifts for politicians and other items even as the company was winding up its operations. It also made a mystery 200 000 zloty donation to Aeroklub Warszawski, an aviation club.

Equity markets

Total loss is not a deduction,

Tax Office says

You cannot make a deduction from your stock market gains if the company you owned went bankrupt and was delisted from the WSE, Silesian Tax Office said in a recent ruling after a complaint made by a local investor. Tax authorities explained they wouldn?t recognize the investment as a loss until he actually sells the stock, no easy feat given that the company he owned was no longer traded on the public market. One tax counselor warns that even investors who sell worthless stock are not immune from Tax Office logic - if you bought the stock before 2004, it?s exempt from capital gains and you still can?t make the deduction.

Civil engineering

Projprzem may raise dividend

Structural steel components manufacturer Projprzem SA may raise its annual dividend in 2006 because of this year?s prospects for highest-ever earnings. Bydgoszcz, central Poland-based company reported six-month earnings of 2.5 million zloty versus PLN 1.22 million for all of 2004.

Insurance

Compensa plans new acquisitions

Life and property insurer Compensa, a part of Austria?s Wiener Stadtische will receive as much as 100 million euros to pay for acquisitions in Poland, chief executive Franz Fuchs told PARKIET in an interview last week. Its parent-company plans to sell 500 million euros worth of new stock to finance these and other takeovers. The amount doesn?t include three Polish acquisitions Wiener Stadtische has already made this year, Fuchs says. He wouldn?t name potential takeover targets, suggesting only that Compensa is interested primarily in mid-sized insurers.

Compensa now has 2.7 percent market share in property insurance segment and 1.3 percent in life insurance.

Equity markets

AIM waiting for Polish IPOs

UK?s Alternative Investment Market is planning a marketing campaign to encourage companies from continental Europe, including Poland to list on the exchange, vice-president Mathew Wootton said. Right now the most visible company from Poland listed on AIM is UK-registered coffee shop operator Coffeeheaven, but no actual Polish stocks trade there.