News Parkiet

Equity markets

Alstom gives away stock to Polish employees

Almost a quarter of Alstom group staff in Poland signed up for their parent-company?s employee stock purchase program, company officials here told PARKIET yesterday. The French group matched their payment of 0.55 million euros, awarding each of the 530 participating employees up to 3000 additional shares free of charge. Several other Western companies, including IT giants like Oracle, IBM, Nokia and Sun Microsystems offer similar incentives to their Polish staff.

Petrochemicals

MOL prepares for WSE listing

Hungarian oil and gas company MOL Rt. has received the final clearance from the Polish regulator to list its shares on the Warsaw Stock Exchange yesterday. MOL, a regional competitor of Poland?s PKN Orlen petrochemicals group, says its shares will begin trading in Warsaw as early as this month. It is expected to sell 5 percent stake worth approximately 360 million dollars it now owns to institutional investors here. MOL has market capitalization of 7.3 billion dollars against Orlen?s 5.1 billion.

Retailing

Redan CEO detained by police

Shares of Łodz-based clothing retailer Redan S.A. plunged as much as 30 percent after the news late Monday that Polish police has detained its founder and CEO, Radosław Wiśniewski in connection with alleged corruption scandal at the local Customs Office unit. The stock closed at an all-time low of 11.8 zloty, 18 percent off Monday?s price in very heavy trading. Krzysztof Wolski, prosecutor at the organized crime unit in Łódź says the probe focuses on bribes given by Mr. Wiśniewski to customs agents two years ago, before Redan itself went public. The company itself is not under investigation, he said.

Mr. Wiśniewski, 33, who owns almost 70 percent of Redan?s voting stock was released on bail yesterday.

Insurance

Poland settles with Eureko over PZU

Polish government has agreed to give up control over Powszechny Zakład Ubezpieczeniowy, Poland?s no. 1 insurance group, paving the way for an IPO on the Warsaw bourse sometime next year. Under the terms of yesterday?s settlement, the Netherlands-based insurer Eureko and the EBRD will be allowed to buy 5 percent of PZU each as part of the offering.