The State Property Fund (SPF) of Ukraine has announced an auction for the privatization of the Ukraina Hotel with a starting price of UAH 1 billion 47.6 million. According to the SPFU press service, applications for participation in the auction scheduled for September 18 will be accepted until September 17. The guarantee fee is UAH 52.3 million.
The lot includes 14 registered units of real estate and infrastructure, including a hotel building; two security buildings; two non-residential buildings; two parking lots, etc. The total area is 26.3 thousand square meters.
According to the results of January-March 2024, the net loss of SE Hotel Ukraine amounted to UAH 3.1 million. In addition, as of March 31, it had wage arrears (UAH 3.8 million), overdue accounts payable (UAH 21 million), and budgetary debts, namely personal income tax (UAH 4.7 million), tourist tax (UAH 1.4 million), and land tax (UAH 4.5 million).
The privatization terms stipulate that the company’s core business (hotel operations) will be maintained for five years, that wage and budget debts will be paid within six months of the transfer of ownership, that social guarantees will be provided to employees in accordance with the law and that they will not be dismissed within six months, and that environmental legislation will be complied with.
As reported, in April, the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine included Hotel Ukraina in the list of large-scale privatization objects. In May, the auction commission set the starting price for the privatization of the Ukraina Hotel at UAH 1 billion 47 million 637 thousand 152.
The Ukraine Hotel is a state-owned enterprise managed by the SPFU. The 14-story, 4-star hotel has 363 rooms, six conference halls and meeting rooms. There is a parking lot for 80 cars and a shelter with a separate auditorium for 50 people. The total area of the building is 22.4 thousand square meters.
In the second quarter of 2024, the number of agricultural land sale and purchase transactions in Ukraine amounted to 27.3 thousand with a total area of 60.8 thousand hectares, which is 6.3% more than in the first quarter in terms of the number of transactions and 3.3% more than in terms of the area of land in circulation.
These are the results of a study conducted by the Kyiv School of Economics (KSE), commissioned by the USAID program.
“The main factor behind the growth of indicators in the second quarter was a record increase in the volume of the land market in April 2024, when 10.3 thousand purchase and sale transactions were concluded with a total area of 22.5 thousand hectares. After that, the market volumes declined in May (9.0 thousand transactions with a total area of 19.8 thousand hectares) and in June (8.0 thousand transactions with a total area of 18.5 thousand hectares),” analysts stated.
In their opinion, this decline is due to the limited liquidity of farmers, as the sowing campaign has already been completed in May-June, while the harvest has not yet begun, which limited their financial resources. In addition, amid rising land prices after the opening of the land market to legal entities, landowners may wait to sell. Analysts also suggest that there is seasonality in the farmland sales market.
According to KSE experts, in general, the volume of the land market has been recovering since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion, but has not reached pre-war levels. The average monthly sales of agricultural land for six months of 2024 amounted to 19.9 thousand hectares, which is 38% lower than the pre-war figures. At the same time, the area of agricultural land transactions due to the occupation and hostilities has decreased by more than 20% since February 2022.
If we extrapolate the figures for the first half of 2024 to the whole year and do not take into account the areas where the land market is hampered by hostilities, then this year 0.8% of the total amount of agricultural land will be in circulation, which is almost in line with the figures of countries with developed land markets. (…) Given the trends of monthly sales growth until February 2022, it can be argued that if not for the full-scale war, the average monthly volume of land in circulation would be much higher than 32.2 thousand hectares. Thus, the land market has the potential to grow in the short term, according to the KSE study “Land of Endurance”.
Corporate bonds of NovaPay, a non-bank financial institution that is part of the Nova Group, have been purchased by about 2,000 Ukrainians for UAH 365.5 million through the company’s app in the four months since their placement, the company’s press service said on Thursday.
“Under the agreements that have already expired, customers have already been paid UAH 255.1 million. Most often, clients prefer medium-term bonds. 56% of clients invest in bonds repeatedly,” CFO Igor Prikhodko said in a release on Thursday.
As reported, on February 20, NovaPay announced the start of bond sales. It was noted that they can be purchased for a period of 1 to 12 months for the amount of UAH 1000. The interest rate for investments for one, two and three months was 16% per annum, six months – 17% per annum and 12 months – 18% per annum. The issuer stated that it intends to actively use the bonds in repurchase agreements for a period of one month to one year, creating a convenient alternative to deposits, and to launch their secondary market.
According to NovaPay’s latest release, 75% of bond investors are men, 25% are women, the average age is 37, and the oldest investor was 75. The average check for transactions through the app is UAH 41 thousand.
Currently, the investment rate for a month has been reduced to 13% per annum, for 2 months – to 14%, for 3 months – to 16%, for 6 and 12 months – to 16.5% per annum.
In 2023, NovaPay registered three public issues of interest-bearing bonds of series A, B, and C for UAH 100 million each. In 2024, the company issued three more issues of such securities – series D, E and F. The rating agency Standard-Rating assigned them a credit rating of uaAA.
Founded in 2001, NovaPay is an international financial service that is part of the Nova group and provides online and offline financial services at Nova Poshta offices. According to its website, the company employs about 13 thousand people in more than 3.6 thousand Nova Poshta offices across Ukraine. According to the National Bank of Ukraine, the company accounts for 35% of the total volume of domestic money transfers.
A “gender scandal” erupted at the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris because the organizers allowed athletes with XY chromosomes (male) to compete in the women’s competition, The Guardian reported. As it became known, in the 1/8 finals, Italian boxer Angela Carini refused to fight Iman Khelif. The fight was stopped 46 seconds after it started.
Carini cried and said that the blows that Khelif had dealt her were too strong.
“After the second punch, after many years of experience, I felt a strong pain in my nose. I said enough is enough because I didn’t want to. I couldn’t continue the fight after a blow to the nose. So it was better to end it,” The Guardian quoted the athlete as saying.
Earlier, in 2023, the International Boxing Association (IBA) disqualified Iman Helif and Lin Yu-ting from Taiwan because, according to IBA President Umar Kremlin, DNA tests proved that both athletes have XY chromosomes.
At the same time, the International Olympic Committee insists that both Khelif and Lin are “women with passports” and, like all the participants in the tournament, meet all the necessary criteria for participation.
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni commented on the situation: “I believe that athletes with male genetic characteristics should not be allowed to participate in women’s competitions. And not because you want to discriminate against anyone, but to protect the right of female athletes to compete on equal terms,” she said.
The Algerian Olympic Committee, meanwhile, stated that it “strongly condemns the unethical actions and slander of our respected athlete Iman Khelif through baseless propaganda by some foreign media.”
The National Committee of the US Democratic Party has launched an electronic voting procedure that is expected to result in the endorsement of US Vice President Kamala Harris as a presidential candidate in the 2024 elections.
According to ABC News, the voting began on Thursday at 09:00 am US East Coast time (16:00 GMT) and will end on Monday at 18:00 pm US East Coast time (01:00 GMT on Tuesday).
The electronic ballots that the delegates to the Democratic Party convention will receive contain only Kamala Harris’ name. According to the party, 3,923 delegates representing different regions of the country had previously filed a petition asking to put Harris’ name on the ballot. To be officially nominated as a presidential candidate, she must be supported by at least 1976 delegates.
Thus, Harris’s official endorsement may take place two weeks before the Democratic Convention, which opens on August 19 in Chicago. Voting will also take place there, but it will be purely ceremonial.
On July 21, US President Joe Biden announced his withdrawal from the presidential race, but will continue to serve as president until the end of his term and called on the Democratic Party to nominate Harris as its presidential candidate.
The US presidential election is scheduled for November 5, 2024.
Earlier, the Experts Club think tank presented an analytical material on the most important elections in the world in 2024, a more detailed video analysis is available here – https://youtu.be/73DB0GbJy4M?si=eGb95W02MgF6KzXU
You can subscribe to the Experts Club YouTube channel here – https://www.youtube.com/@ExpertsClub
Revenue of restaurant establishments in January-June 2024 showed an increase of 16%, and the average check increased by 13% compared to the same period in 2023 – up to UAH 148, said Rodion Yeroshek, EO of Poster POS.
“Revenue and the average check of establishments are growing due to price increases, but attendance has slowed down in recent months,” he wrote in a telegram.
Yeroshek noted that restaurateurs are forced to raise prices due to rising costs for utilities, staff salaries, and electricity generation. Most entrepreneurs have purchased or rented generators, and some are considering installing solar panels. In addition, there are those who are considering purchasing semi-finished products, which significantly reduces the cooking time in the establishment.
According to him, in February-April, attendance at food outlets was growing, but in May-June it dropped. Possible reasons include economic uncertainty and increased mobilization. However, the overall figure for the half-year was positive: +2% for the first half of 2024.
“The difficult circumstances in which institutions are forced to operate now do not stop the market. In the first half of 2024, 7617 individual entrepreneurs and LLCs have already registered under the restaurant KVED, which is 3% more than in the same period last year,” stated the CEO of Poster POS.
Poster POS is a Ukrainian restaurant automation company that develops accounting software for the HoReCa system and is installed on tablets. More than 50 thousand establishments use the developer’s services.
The research conducted by the company is based on non-personalized aggregated statistics of Poster sales data. The sample of respondents includes 8,500 catering establishments of all types from all regions of Ukraine.
