News Parkiet

Equity markets

Several stockbrokers to raise account fees

Several major Polish brokerage houses, including CDM Pekao, no. 2 on the market, plan to raise their account fees despite booming stock market and recent influx of new investors.

Gross earnings of local brokers more than tripled to PLN 221.6 million in the six months to June.

Bank Pekao's Centralny Dom Maklerski says it will double its annual account fee to PLN 60 starting next year citing extra expenses associated with capital gains tax and plans to upgrade its backoffice system. Other stockbrokers who say they will increase their account fees include ING Securities and Dom Maklerski BZ WBK.

Trading commissions will stay the same and may actually go down if KDPW clearing house and the Warsaw Stock Exchange extend lower trading fees beyond the end of 2004 sometime next year.

Industrial controls

Apator buys another industrial equipment maker

Apator automatic controls maker is negotiating a deal to buy large stake in Metrix SA, a smaller home appliance and metering equipment manufacturer from publicly traded privatization fund, sources told PARKIET yesterday.

It has already agreed to pay 4.7 million zloty for 33 percent stake in Metrix now held by Drugi NFI.

Apator, which estimates its 2004 sales at 124 million zloty, bought two other competitors over the last year, including Pafal industrial control manufacturer and KFAP SA, which makes heat sensors for district heating companies.

Venture capital

bmp AG down 2.35 pct. on Warsaw IPO

Shares of German venture capital fund bmp AG fell 2.35 percent to close at 8.3 zloty yesterday, down about 10 eurocents from their Polish offering price of 2.1 euros.

Earlier this month bmp AG became the first foreign company to list its shares on the Warsaw bourse using the so-called single-passport rules for European Union issuers.

Polish retail investors bought 1.8 million shares of the 7.5 million share cross-border offering. There were no takers among institutional investors, though.

bmp AG's investment portfolio includes two Polish Internet stocks. It says it plans to spend part of the 9.6 million euros from the offering to buy stakes in other tech companies here.

Outsourcing

Impel loss narrows on higher subsidies

Cleaning and security firm Impel SA said this year's loss will decline to 18.9 million zloty from the previously announced PLN 31 million because of new rules that restate some of the public subsidies for Polish firms that hire handicapped workers. Wrocław-based company expects to receive subsidies of some 63 million zloty ($20 million) this year.

Impel was forced to fire over 2500 of its 9500 lightly disabled workers in the nine months to October.