The Antimonopoly Committee of Ukraine has permitted Cypriot T.A.S. Overseas Investments Limited, the key shareholder of which is ex-Deputy Prime Minister Sergiy Tigipko, to acquire pharmacy business of the Kosmo retail chain.
According to the report, the acquisition would grant over 50% of the votes in the management body of the company to Tigipko.
As reported, at the end of 2018, the TAS pharmacy chain (TAS Pharma LLC), part of the TAS Group, announced its plans to buy 60 pharmacies in the near future, boosting the number of pharmacies to 153 by February 2019. It was about three transactions for the purchase of pharmaceutical networks consisting of 26 and 34 pharmacies.
TAS Group was founded in 1998. It has assets in financial and industrial sectors, agriculture, real estate, pharmaceuticals and venture projects. The founder and main shareholder of the group is Sergiy Tigipko.
Currently the TAS chain has 114 pharmacies, including 71 located in Kyiv.
The pharmacy business of the Kosmo retail chain, which is under control of SigmaBleyzer investment fund, has 28 pharmacies in Kyiv city and region.
The National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) counts on continuation of cooperation of Ukraine with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) after the expiration of the currency Stand-By Arrangement (SBA), according to an inflation report for January 2019 posted on the website of the central bank.
The document, in particular, has the key assumptions for the macroeconomic forecast of the NBU for 2019-2021, including payments to the public sector from donors in 2019-2021 ($6.5 billion from the IMF, $1.6 billion each from the EU and the World Bank), along with the placement of government external loan bonds for $8.5 billion, will allow refinancing most of the payments on external obligations.
As reported, the IMF Executive Board, following a meeting on December 19, 2018, approved a new program of cooperation with Ukraine under the stand-by arrangement. The amount of the 14-month program is equivalent to SDR 2.8 billion, or about $3.9 billion. Some SDR 1 billion (about $1.4 billion) was provided immediately, while the remaining funds will be provided based on the results of the program reviews in May and September 2019. The NBU thus plans to raise some $4 billion from the IMF in 2020-2021.
In addition, at the end of January 2019, the NBU said that it had laid out macroeconomic forecasts for the country to place eurobonds worth $2 billion in 2019. Thus, the National Bank expects an increase in sovereign eurobonds in subsequent years to more than $3 billion.
As reported, Ukraine in October 2018 placed two tranches of eurobonds: $750 million five-year bonds and $1.25 billion 10-year bonds.
The yield on the five-year bonds was 9% per annum, and for the 10-year bonds it is 9.75%.
BNP Paribas, Citi, Goldman Sachs and J.P. Morgan acted as organizers of the issue.
The Antimonopoly Committee of Ukraine has permitted Komisiano Investments Ltd. (Limassol, Cyprus) of businessman Vadim Novinsky to acquire a stake in the charter capital of Yudzhin LLC (Kyiv), granting over 50% of the votes in the management body of the latter.
“This transaction is carried out within the implementation of the development strategy of the real estate business. In this connection, the holding decided to build up the majority stake in the Yudzhin company,” Smart-holding told Interfax-Ukraine.
Yudzhin LLC was created in 2001. Its core business is the development of construction projects.
Its charter capital is UAH 682.14 million.
Primary registrations of electric vehicles in Ukraine in January 2019 increased by 2.3 times year-over-year, to 441 units, with used electric cars imported into Ukraine accounting for 91.6% of the total number (404 units), the Ukrautoprom Association has said. The Nissan Leaf make remains the most popular electric car on the Ukrainian market with 231 units registered in January 2019.
The leader among the new electric cars was the Jaguar I-Pace, chosen by 13 owners, while this make was not among used cars registered in Ukraine.
The Top 10 electric vehicles in January included the Nissan Leaf (231 cars), Renault Zoe (29), TESLA Model S (28), BMW i3 (27), FIAT 500e (24), Volkswagen e-Golf (18), Tesla Model X (16), Jaguar I-Pace (13), KIA Soul EV (11), Chevrolet Bolt and Mercedes-Benz B Electric Drive (10 each).
According to the association, Ukrainians bought 5,300 electric vehicles in 2018, which is almost two times more than a year earlier. The share of used cars was 83.5%.
At the same time, demand for new electric vehicles was higher than that for used cars: if primary registrations of used electric vehicles doubled, registration of new ones increased 2.2 times.
The Nissan Leaf remained the most popular electric car in Ukraine, accounting for 64% (3,378 cars) of the primary electric car market, but 94% of the cars were used vehicles imported from abroad. The BMW i3 ranked second with 352 cars bought by Ukrainians (69% of them were used cars). The third place is occupied by the Tesla Model S with 259 sold cars (64% of used cars).
The business confidence indicator in the construction market of Ukraine in the first quarter of 2019 increased by 4.8 percentage points (p.p.) compared to the fourth quarter of 2018, to minus 12.5%. According to the poll of construction companies by the State Statistics Service, the assessment of a shortage of the current volume of orders fell by 10 p.p., to minus 30%.
According to the results of the survey, 32% of companies rated their current order volume as insufficient, 65% as normal for the season and only 2% as exceeding the norm.
Some 44% of respondents expect an increase in prices for their services in the first quarter of this year, which is 1 p.p. more than in the fourth quarter of 2018, while 2% of the companies surveyed predict a decrease in the cost of construction work, and 54% do not expect any changes in the price policy.
According to the service, companies participating in the survey are provided with orders for an average of five months, which corresponds to the indicators of 2018.
The service said in the first quarter unfavorable weather conditions will more affect the work of construction companies, and 39% of respondents will continue to experience financial constraints. In addition, 20% of companies will be constrained by an insufficient demand, 18% by a shortage of workforce.
Some 20% of the companies surveyed expect a reduction in the number of their employees in January-March 2019, while 16% predict an increase in the number of employees.
