As Malta’s leading provider of communications and entertainment services, GO offers fixed line telephony, mobile telephony, broadband internet services and digital television, in addition to business-related services like data networking solutions, business IP services, and managed and co-location facilities. Although the company’s major market is Malta – the smallest member state of the EU, with a population of 400,000 people – the company does business with international companies based in Malta and abroad. In fact, GO is also looking at entering into new markets overseas. GO powers more than 500,000 customer connections and service...
In the past 10 years, conventional financial institutions in the MENA region have moved heavily to create an online presence for themselves. The online trading ‘tornado’ started to affect the MENA region early 2004. Since that time it has amazingly remodelled the financial industry. International and regional online brokerages, which first came into the scene, attacked the MENA mass markets with the new ‘unbelievable’ phenomenon of online trading. AM Financials noticed the increase in popularity of online financial trading worldwide. The company realised the need to heavily invest in its products and employees to service the increasin...
The Diagnostic and Therapeutic Centre of Athens Hygeia S.A. was established in 1970 in Greece by physicians, most of whom were professors at the University of Athens. Since 1975 it has operated in the primary and secondary healthcare services. In January 2006, Marfin Investment Group (MIG) acquired the company, and it became MIG’s investment arm in the healthcare services sector. During the next 24 months the new administration pursued a spree of investment initiatives (acquisitions, mergers and incorporation of new companies’) transforming Hygeia into a multinational group with one vision: to create the largest private integrated healthc...
With leading market positions and a strong operating performance, TVN Group has outperformed its peer group. The Polish advertising market is on track to return to its peak 2008 levels this year. As a result, TVN Group is well positioned to benefit from the further development and digitisation of the Polish media market. TVN Group operates in three main business segments: television broadcasting, satellite pay TV and online. Advertising accounts for 60 percent of total revenue, but the company’s fastest growing segment is non-advertising subscription revenue – a key strategic focus. The group successfully managed its way through the globa...
The Bank of England has had a torrid time of late, with inflation persistently overshooting its forecasts and a series of letters to the Treasury to explain why this has been the case. Independent analysis shows that nominal spending in the UK is rising and inflation has hit four percent. Cries can be heard from the City – particularly from investors concerned with the value of their bond portfolios – that the bank is losing its inflation-fighting credibility and prices are slipping out of control. Such fears are overdone. The bank has correctly pointed out that a string of one-off factors – VAT rises and commodity price shocks – have...
Asia runs the risk of being left behind in the sudden wave of transatlantic stock exchange consolidation, given the tough regulatory regimes, cumbersome ownership structures and protectionist minded governments. The proposed tie-up between NYSE Euronext and Deutsche Boerse along with the London Stock Exchange’s move for Canada’s TMX Group has prompted talk the global exchange market is set to shrink to two or three big players. But a reluctance by many Asian nations to cede control to foreign ownership and the struggle to improve capital market integration means their exchanges are unlikely to have a seat at the table. “I just don’t t...
Tentative reforms and some eye-catching projects could herald a private sector-driven shake-up of India’s creaking railways, but deeper change is needed to tackle the supply bottlenecks that still crimp growth. Once seen as a shining legacy of the British Raj and still one of the world’s biggest employers, India’s rail network crams 18 million people a day on to its ageing trains running from the foothills of the Himalayas to the southern beaches of Kerala. Decades of low investment and policy stagnation mean India has fallen far behind emerging market peer China in building a network fit for Asia’s third-largest economy. Contrasts ab...
Auditing firms in the European Union face more competition and curbs on their activities to restore their “tarnished” image, the bloc’s financial services chief has announced. “One can no longer say ‘move on, there is nothing to see’ on audit issues,” EU Internal Market Commissioner Michel Barnier told a webstreamed hearing on auditing in Brussels. “I shall make suggestions with the aim of presenting a proposal for a directive in November,” Barnier said. The sector is dominated by the “Big Four” – KPMG, Deloitte, Ernst & Young and PriceWaterhouseCoopers – who check the books of most blue-chip companies across th...
The London Stock Exchange (LSE) is to buy Canada’s TMX to claw back lost market share and create the world’s fourth-largest bourse trading $4.1trn of stock a year. Shares in the LSE, first established in 1698, jumped nine percent as markets welcomed the all-share deal, and indicating a per share valuation for TMX of C$46.7, up 16 percent. The deal would create the number one global centre of mining and energy stock trading and values the Toronto group at about $3.2bn. “The deal looks like a defensive looking merger of equals driven by competitive pressures … and geographical constraints i.e. the need to attract more international busi...
Miner Xstrata reported a better-than-expected 86 percent jump in annual profit on stronger commodity prices and gave a positive outlook for 2011. The Anglo-Swiss miner said it was still assessing the impact on this year’s results from the recent flooding and cyclones in Queensland – where it has coal, copper and zinc operations – after it was forced to close some mines in the Australian state. “As we stand at the moment we don’t see any significant impact on 2011 results,” Chief Executive Mick Davis told reporters. Xstrata, the fifth-biggest diversified miner by market capitalisation, said the full impact would partly depend on th...