News Parkiet

Insurance

Private equity investors

bought small stakes in PZU, records show

Thirty individual investors as well as two dozen investment banks and private equity funds registered their minority stakes in privately held Powszechny Zakład Ubezpieczeniowy, before annual meeting of Poland?s no. 1 insurance company. The biggest, Commerzbank unit BRE Bank owns 652.000 shares of the company. On the unofficial curb market, shares of PZU distributed to company employees trade at around 220 - 240 zloty each.

Mining

KGHM considering dividends,

LatAm investments

Shares of KGHM Polish Copper, Europe?s biggest copper mine rose 3.9 percent to close at 31.9 zloty yesterday after the company said it would consider paying at least 100 million zloty from last year?s earnings as dividends. State-owned conglomerate, which reported fiscal 2004 earnings of PLN 1.4 billion, or nearly 7 zloty per share, last paid dividends four years ago. KGHM has 200 million shares outstanding.

Chief executive Wiktor Błądek, a long-time mining executive backed by KGHM?s militant trade unions, said the company may buy open pit copper mines in Latin America. It has already made a bid for Peru?s Rio Blanco mine along with four competing mining groups, Błądek said. He estimates the cost of developing Rio Blanco at more than

750 million US dollars.

Metals

Śrubex starts trading at 55 zloty

Metal fasteners manufacturer Śrubex SA started trading yesterday morning a week after raising 50 million zloty for itself and for its shareholders in an IPO that was more than twenty times oversubscribed. Śrubex, based in Łańcut in south-central Poland, sold just over one million shares at 50 zloty ($16) each. On Thursday the stock begun trading at 55 zloty, ten percent higher than its IPO price.

Based on its closing price of 53 zloty and the total number of shares outstanding and rights to new shares that are not yet registered by the court, Śrubex has market value of 94.5 million zloty.

It said earlier in its prospectus it expects earnings of PLN 11.5- 2.5 million on sales of approximately 157 million this year.

Banking

ING Bank Śląski turns to profit,

announces record dividend

ING Bank Śląski, Polish unit of ING Groep, reported a profit of more than 140 million zloty ($45.8 million) for the fourth quarter because of lower provisions. Polish lender, the country?s sixth largest, posted a loss of 5.7 million zloty a year earlier. ING Bank Śląski said it plans a dividend of 20.5 zloty per share for 2004, representing about 70 percent of net income. The bank reported earnings per share of 28.15 zloty. Dividends for fiscal 2003 totaled just 0.8 zloty.

Shares of ING Bank Śląski, which are part of WIG20 blue-chip index, rose 6.2 percent to close at 435 zloty on the news.

Information Technology

Lumena IPO postponed until next year

Hardware supplier Lumena has decided to postpone planned IPO until early 2006, sources at the Warsaw-based firm told PARKIET yesterday. Lumena said previously it would file for IPO as early as this March, but it still hasn?t registered as a joint stock company. Polish stock exchange regulations prevent limited liability companies from listing their shares.

Lumena also said its sales last year totaled 110 million zloty, down from a record high of PLN 160 million in 2003, when it reported a huge hardware order for one of its clients.

Real estate

GTC to expand operations in Romania

Globe Trade Centre real estate developer has announced plans to invest 150 million euros to build a new shopping mall plus adjacent residential and office development in the Romanian capital of Bucharest. Warsaw-based firm said it has purchased 120.000 square meter lot in prime location in northern part of Bucharest for 15.5 million euro as the location for its new project.