Polish Business Survey
Warsaw radio finds investor
Warsaw based Radio Kolor is close to being purchased by the American investment fund Advent, one of the owners of national broadcaster Radio Zet. However it would appear that Paweł Obrębski, the owner of a 80 percent share of Kolor has received another offer from the so far unknown Polska Grupa Medialna.
Advent is legally allowed to purchase a maximum of 33 percent of the radio station as it is a foreign company. This would leave 51 percent in the hands of Paweł Obrębski and theoretically 16 percent could be bought by Polska Grupa Medialna. However no-one, including industry specialists, has ever heard of them.
Radio Kolor is the only Warsaw based radio station not to have linked up with a more powerful partner. Obrębski claimed that he does not need an investor from this sector, but rather one that could assure the financial future of the company. This would allow Kolor to continue its fight for listeners with Radio Pogoda which belongs to one of Poland s largest publishing houses Agora.
Sales down but dealerships grow
The sale of cars in the first four months of this year could have a significant effect on the growth of dealerships of which there are between 1,200 - 1,300 in this country. Auto manufacturers wish to avoid the situation that has occurred in several Western European countries where too many dealers selling cars to too few customers led to drastic reductions in sales points. Despite this several Polish companies are planning on increasing their sales base. Renault for example hopes to increase its dealerships from the current 129 up to 140 by the end of the year.
General Motors,trading under the Opel mark, has 90 dealerships together with 37 associated sales points. Nonetheless this year there will only be one new dealer and nine to ten new associates. Witold Kowalski, development manager at GM Poland says that he is looking at slow build up of his network.
Fiat, which has 104 dealers and around a further 150 sales points, is unwilling to talk about its plans. However Bogusław Cieślar of Fiat Auto Poland says that no major changes are in the offing.
Daewoo is aiming to reduce the distance between each dealership to at least 50km. At the end of 1998 it had 200 dealers, by the end of this year it will be down to 150.
RWE enters Polish energy market
The German RWE Energie is planning on investing PLN4bn - PLN5bn in Poland which will be used for such things as the purchase of privatised power stations and the Bełchatów power plant. The company is also talking to representatives of the chemical industry, offering them a full range of amenities such as electricity, coal, gas and water.
A few days ago RWE Energie and RWE Energie Trading were registered as companies in Poland.. The former will purchase privatised plants, the second deals in energy trading. The Germans claim that they are looking at a twenty percent share of the market and once they receive a concession from the energy regulatory board will enter the energy bourse of which they hope to become one day a shareholder.
RWE Energie is interested in buying Polish companies from every area of the energy market. It has signalled its interest in purchasing shares in the Upper Silesian energy concern GZE for which it is competing with six other companies. This company alone could swallow 20-25 percent of the resources that RWE Energie has assigned to Poland.
The second privatisation that interests the German company is the planned sale next year of the Bełchatów power station which is the largest producer of electricity in this country. The cost of this operation is not yet known although the treasury recently signalled that it was only interested in a 20 -25 percent sale of the company to a strategic investor.
Marek Palonka, press spokesperson for RWE Energie said that the company will attempt to get shares in the power station irrespective of how it is privatised. The key element for them is if the power station will be privatised alongside its lignite mine, as one is dependent on the other. It has already happened that the power station was forced to shut down because of a strike at the mine and any investor who bought the plant without the pit would be in very difficult terrain. Up until now the treasury has insisted that the two would be privatised together.
The Germans are not new to Bełchatów. Together with the Japanese Marubeni they won a tender to construct a 800MW plant commonly called Bełchatów II. This investment should allow the original power plant to be renovated from around 2006 without power supply and lignite production being effected.
Klaus Bussfeld, member of the board at RWE Energie AG declared that the most attractive regions in Poland are around Warsaw and in Silesia. although he does not discount other areas of the country.
TU Compensa finds distributor
It has been rumoured that next week insurer TU Compensa will sign a cooperation agreement with Hamburg-Mannheimer Polska. H-MP has 700 agents selling various insurance products. It aims to increase its workforce to 2,000. At the same time TU Compensa has accelerated its restructuring programme. At the end of last year the company had a 3.1 percent share of the property and personal insurance market.