Headlines (April 21 2003):
BUSINESS NEWS
Vienna based CSI company, owner of the privatized Incoms Telecom Holding Plc. gave up one of the four factories of the holding. The management of the Austrian company refused to buy 50% of Incoms EM Plc. shares in Blagoevgrad for LV 7 mln and the shares were transferred to Bulgarleasing Financial company Plc, presided by Dimitar Tadarakov.
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RCT Ltd and the company NetScreen Technologies signed a partnership contract. The letter company is known for its range of solutions for net security. The NetScreen devices provide opportunities for protection using Firewall and VPN gateways, working at gigabite speeds.
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The probable criteria of the American companies for selection of Bulgarian firms, aspiring to become subcontractors for delivery of goods and services for the reconstruction of Iraq as well as information about tenders can be found on the site of the Ministry of Economy (www.mi.government.bg/).
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$500 mln were invested in Bulgaria by 1500 Greek companies, alltogether employing about 100 000 people, Investor.bg reported. At the same time the interest to enter the Bulgarian market among other Greek companies remains high, it transpired at the conference on Business and realities in Bulgaria and prosrects for 2004, held yesterday in Thessaloniki. (09.04)
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The enterprises, which are liable for independent financial odit of their annual financial reports (AFR), should publish their AFR in the format in which the letter were validated by an independent oditor, reminded the deputy finance minister Gati al Jabury. The fines for not doing so are between LV 1500 and LV 2000 while a juridical subject or a singular trader can be also fined to the amount of LV 2000 to LV 3000.
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The British company Gort securities is the new owner of Interhotel grand hotel Sofia Plc., owner of the 5-star Radisson SAS drand hotel Sofia as well, announced the owner of the British company Henry Guin Jounce.
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1 002 948 persons have been registered in Bulstat by April the 1st. Out of them 958 974 have active registrations and 43974 have ceased their registration. The biggest number of economic operators - 225 951 have been registered in Sofia sity followed by Plovdiv - 87 743 and Varna - 68 901.
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The Austrian company Casinos Austria is about enter the lottery business in Bulgaria, the influential Austrian magazine Profile reports in its latest issue. According to the magazine one of the wored biggest entertainment companies is interested in taking part the privatisation of the Bulgarian state money-prizes lottery.
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Intel and Via Technologies have reached an agreement settling all future patent court disputes between the two companies, connected with chipsets and microprocessors. The two companies had been engaged in 11 court battles in 5 countries which were connected with 27 patents. As a part of the settlement they reached an agreement on cross licensing, which covers all their products. The agreement doesn't affect S3 Graphics - a company partly owned by Via.
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ProSoft reported a 10% increase of sales in 2002 as compared with the previous year. The company, which is among the leaders in the IT sector, has been on the market for the last 13 years. According to an American market research agency in 2002 ProSoft Terminator is on the second place in terms of configurations sold in Bulgaria after the world giant HP and the portable ProSoft Innovator is third after HP and IBM.
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We are in a joint regime of taking managerial decisions together with the buyer, which has been imposed to us by the Privatization Agency, said Boiko Dimitrachkov, Executive Director of the BTC. According to a letter of the Agency sent to the BTC, all major decisions, contracts and commercial projects should be coordinated with the buyer.
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The leading designer of solutions for business management and the delivery chain QAD Inc. will add-up new products to its flagman MFG/PRO and will thereby offer the build-up of solutions oriented towards the customers requirements in 6 vertical segments. The company will concentrate their efforts in the food and food-processing industry, pharmacutical industry, electronics, medical and automotor industries as well as the production of goods for mass-consumption, Raimand Tomesky, regional manager for Europe, Middle East and Africa reported at a seminar. More details can be found in the newest issue of Computerworld Bulgaria.
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"Digital Media Technologies" (DMT) will be the only Bulgarian participant in the NAB2003 exhibition, which is to be held between April the 5th and the 10th this year in Las Vegas. NAB2003 is the biggest international exhibition for TB technologies in the PAL world. DMT Ltd. will exhibit their product at stand ¹ SU6215 of their partner from Atlanta, USA - Stradis Inc. The company will demonstrate the innovations in the PlayBox modules AirBox v.3.8, DataBox v.2.0, ListBox v.1.0, CaptureBox v.2.0 etc.
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The BTC expects the net profit of the company to grow-up by LV 11 mln and to reach LV 210 mln, according to the Bulgarian accountancy standards in the year 2003, announced Elena Gueorgieva, the Financial Director of the company.
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The forthcoming summer season is expected to be quite successful with a very good booking rate of the hotels, declared Liudmila Nenkova, executive Director of Riviera Plc. The bookings are so far very good and better than the same period of the previous year. There are no cancelations.
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The net profit of Overgas Inc. for 2002 is LV 936 000 against LV 709 000 for the previous 2001, according to the odit balance of the company. The income grew up to LV 23,961 mln in 2002 as compared with an income of LV 20,302 mln in 2001. In 2002 there was an additional income of LV 3,438 mln from interest payments as well.
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Until the end of April this year the losses of Sofia Airport because of the Iragi war will probably reach $27 000. If the military campaign continues till june, the losses for the Airport will be $160 000 and if the hostilities continue till the end of the year, the losses will amount to $270 000.
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COMMON Europe Congress (www.comeur.org/cec2003) will be held on May 25th-27th in Warsaw, allowing the IBM customers (and espetially eServer - customers) to exchange opinions and share experiences with IT specialists. The forum is being organized annually by COMMON - an non-commercial organization of IBM equipment users and is to be held in Eastern Europe for the first time.
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The outsourcing is a practice wich is less and less associated with the big companies only, concluded a Gartner research, published yesterday. Representatives of 43 companies, offering outsourcing services, had been questioned. It turned out that, although the big companies remain in the focus, the managers of the outsourcing companies increasingly look for clients among the smaller businesses. The big clients accounted for 64% of the income of the outsourcing companies in 2002 while in 2001 this figure had been 75%.
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The ARC Fund and Free Software Association organized a round table on the subject of "Business with an open code software" on the 14th of April. The representative of MySQL AB Aleksandar Keremidarsky explained the structure of the multinational IT company, which has based its business entirely on software with an open code. For the first time the BG Debian project was publicly presented. It might be of interest both to the business and to the state administration. Representatives of the Bulgarian IT business, members of BAIT, BASCOM and journalists participated in the discussion.
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The Bulgarian investment forum - projects and financing will be held May 13-15th 2003 in the National Palace of Culture in Sofia. The forum will be opened by Gueorgy Parvanov, President of the Republic of Bulgaria. Financial schemes of projects with state participation, liberalization of the telecommunication market - prospects and challenges, conditions for the financing of small and medium enterprises will be among the topics to be discussed. A round table on the Opportunities for investment into the Bulgarian telecommunication market will also be held.
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The return of the Iraqi debt to Bulgarian is arranged and the USA claim for the debt to be cancelled or restructured doesn't apply to our country but only affects the countries of the Paris club. This became clear after the meeting of the Minister of finance Milen Velchev and Ad Melker, the new executive Director for Bulgaria in the World Bank Board.
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The new Bulgarian air-carrier Bulgarian air has accumulated LV 2,117 mln of losses during the first three months of its existence only. The first official flight of the company was executed on December the 4th last year.At its setting up it was decided that the company should be financed by the fiscal reserve to the amount of LV 30 mln.