Tag Archives: business

Telenor manager quits due to Uzbek corruption incident

MAY 9 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Norwegian telecoms company Telenor said that its deputy chair- man Frank Dangeard had stepped down as the company continued to grapple with corruption allegations over VimpelCom’s dealings in Uzbekistan. Telenor owns a 33% stake in Amsterdam-based, Russian telecoms operator VimpelCom. Telenor wants to sell its stake in VimpelCom, valued at around $2b.

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(News report from Issue No. 280, published on May 13 2016)

Armenian to re-consider cement deal

MAY 12 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – The Armenian government re-submitted a bill to parliament to write- off part of the Hradzan cement plant’s debt, in an attempt to save the company from bankruptcy. Last month, parliament rejected an earlier bill designed to pardon 510m dram ($1.1m) that the company owes in unpaid tax.

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(News report from Issue No. 280, published on May 13 2016)

Georgian wine exports grow

MAY 11 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Georgia exported 11.6m bottles of wine in 2015, an increase of 45% from 2014, its national wine agency said. Total revenues earned from wines increased by 15% to $26.9m. Wine is an important export for Georgia. It has been heavily marketing its wine and its status as one of the original wine-making countries. Russia, Ukraine and Kazakhstan are the biggest markets for Georgian wine.

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(News report from Issue No. 280, published on May 13 2016)

Kazakh kommertsbank’s chairman wants all KKB

MAY 6 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazkommertsbank’s chairman, Kenes Rakishev, said he is ready to buy out minority shareholders offering 211 tenge ($0.63) per share. The deal, which is expected to be concluded by the end of the year, will cost $145m and will give Mr Rakishev full ownership of the bank. Directly and indirectly, Mr Rakishev now owns 71% of Kazkommertsbank.

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(News report from Issue No. 280, published on May 13 2016)

Romania seizes Kazakhstan’s Kazmunaigas refinery

ALMATY, MAY 6 2016, (The Conway Bulletin) – Prosecutors in Romania ordered the seizure of the Petromidia refinery part-owned by a subsidiary of Kazakhstan’s Kazmunaigas as they re-opened an investigation into its privatisation in the 2000s.

The seizure of the refinery comes only a few days after China’s CEFC China Energy Company Limited completed a $680m deal to buy a 51% stake in KMG International, the Kazmunaigas subsidiary that owns the Petromidia refinery. Kazmunaigas has been looking to sell off assets and raise cash to help it through a sustained economic downturn.

Rompetrol was renamed KMG International in 2014, although the Rompetrol brand still lingers.

Romanian investigators have been focused on recovering cash they say is owed to it after a deal by the late Dinu Patriciu to buy the Petromidia refinery in 2003 from the state for $760m through Rompetrol, which he owned. He bought the Petromidia refinery from the government not with cash but with a bond.

In 2007, Patriciu sold Rompetrol and its daughter companies to Kazmunaigas for $1.6b.

When in 2010 Rompetrol’s bonds reached maturity, Kazmunaigas refused to pay the government the $600m coupon. Instead it gave the Romanian government a 45% stake in Rompetrol. This was reduced to 18% in 2014 after the Romanian government agreed to sell Kazakhstan a 27% stake for $200m.

KMG International said it had not been involved in any wrongdoing and that this legal case could damage its business plans in Romania.

“These are new developments which may have significant negative impact on KMG’s strategic objectives and development plans in Romania,” the press service said in a statement.

The company later also said it is also ready to take legal action.

“We will analyse the facts about the charges and to what extent such deeds justify the seizure of company assets. If we find that the seizure is not justified, we will challenge those seizures,” Gheorghe Albu, a lawyer for KMG International lawyer, said.

Petromidia is Romania’s largest refinery and is situated near Năvodari on the Black Sea coast.

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(News report from Issue No. 280, published on May 13 2016)

Iran swaps oil plans with Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan

MAY 9 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Iran’s deputy oil minister, Amir Hossein Zamaninia said his country plans to swap oil and gas with Russia, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan. Currently, Iran relies solely on Turkmen supplies for its northern provinces. In the past few years, Iran has signed short-term swaps with Kazakhstan and Russia. The new plan aims to turn these short-term deals into long-term agreements. Central Asian states, especially Kazakhstan, have been keen to pull Iran into their sphere of economic influence since most sanctions were lifted earlier this year.

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(News report from Issue No. 280, published on May 13 2016)

GM Uzbekistan’s car sales to Russia fall in April

MAY 12 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Sales of GM Uzbekistan’s cars to Russia fell 5% in April compared to the same month last year, dashing hopes raised last month that sales were starting to improve.

Russia is GM Uzbekistan’s biggest market, leaving it badly exposed to a Russian economic recession.

Car sales to Russia had started to pick up in February and March for GM Uzbekistan, a joint venture between US-based GM and state owned UzAvtosanoat, raising hopes that the worst of the economic down- turn had been weathered.

But data from the Moscow-based Association of European Businesses (AEB), which publishes monthly sales numbers in Russia, said GM Uzbekistan had sold just 1,571 units in April, down from 1,677 in March. As a comparison, this is around a third of the sales number of the same month in 2012.

Joerg Schreiber, AEB chairman said, that the outlook wasn’t any better.

“The volume of absolute sales [in Russia] has fallen to the lowest level in 10 years,” he said in a statement.

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(News report from Issue No. 280, published on May 13 2016)

Huawei and Uzbek telecom start JV

MAY 9 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – China’s Huawei Technologies and Uztelecom, Uzbekistan’s state owned telecoms company, said they will start a joint venture, called Broadband Solutions, to produce telecoms kits. The new company will be based in the Jizzak special economic zone, around 100km northeast of Samarkand. Uztelecom will take a 51% stake in the joint venture, Huawei will own the rest. The deal valued the company at around $6m.

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(News report from Issue No. 280, published on May 13 2016)

Glencore to sell Kazakh mine

MAY 3 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Switzerland-based miner Glencore said it is considering selling its share in the Vasilkovskoye gold mine in Kazakhstan for around $2b. Glencore owns 70% of Kazzinc, the company that operates Vasilkovskoye which is located 300 km north-west of Astana. According to unnamed sources quoted in the Wall Street Journal, the buyers could be Chinese investors. China has been looking to buy Kazakh gold.

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(News report from Issue No. 279, published on May 6 2016)

Kazakhstan explains power nexus

APRIL 29 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakhstan has sold 218m kWh of electricity to Kyrgyzstan in 2016 at a price of 9 tenge ($0.03) per kWh from the Ekibastuz power station, the Kazakh government said. Kazakhstan earned around $6m from the sale. Kyrgyzstan is a net importer of electricity from neighbouring countries due to chronic water shortages in recent years. Last year, Kazakhstan and Tajikistan exported around 400m kWh to Kyrgyzstan.

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(News report from Issue No. 279, published on May 6 2016)