15.12.2010

Nordic Markets were up for the day despite news that Moody’s cut outlook for Spanish debt rating. Positive macro data from the United States helped in late session. Portugal sold 500 million worth of T-bills. Demand was strong but yields almost doubled in about 1.5 months time. This was still lower than expected and below current yields on the secondary market.

Norges bank kept key policy rate unchanged at 2 per cent. The Central Bank says that growth in the Norwegian economy has picked up and that capacity utilisation is increasing. Sweden’s Riksbank on the other hand did raise rates by 0.25% to 1.25%. Riksbank communicated that the Swedish economy is growing at a record rate and that there are short term inflation pressures due to higher electricity prices. Further increases were paved way for as well. The reason for recent high electricity prices at the Nord Pool Spot market can be traced to combined effect of low water levels at the hydro plants and cold weather.

Scania has received an order for 50 trucks and an option for 100 more from Buchanan Renewables Fuels in Liberia. ABB won 140 million USD electricity substations order from Qatar General Electricity and Water Corporation. Huhtamäki gave a positive profit warning for 2010. Norwegian will start flying Stockholm-Gothenburg route

Swedish Shareholders Association Sveriges Aktiesparares Riksförbund (Aktiespararna) is recommending its members to reject Ratos bid for the shares of Biolin Scientific (see 29.11.2010 ). Aktiespararna’s CEO Günther Mårder says on the organization’s website that they feel Ratos is using a temporary slump in Biolin’s valuation to time the bid and that the long term potential of Biolin exceeds the offered price.

Stockholm District Court found three former options traders of Carnegie bank not guilty of market price manipulation, Dagens Industri writes. H & M sales figures for November were very positive but some bad news from peer companies pushed H & M stock down. Volvo sold a lot more cars in November and the news added a little bit to stock market value.

Scana Industrier ASA won a contract with Ulstein Verft AS for propulsion system and controls for two Seismic Research vessels. The vessels are being built for Polarcus. MT Højgaard sells steel- and piping business Promecon. Kitron has received new orders totalling around 20 millon NOK per year for optical networking solutions. Atrium Ljungberg has signed a long term agreement with AkzoNobel for an operations centre to be erected in Sickla. Sjælsø Gruppen A/S will build 159 student apartments at the port of Aarhus. The total project value is DKK 135 million.

ASGAARD GROUP A/S fiscal year ended with a loss of 10.5 million DKK. The loss was mainly due to write-down on former headquarters building. Skako A/S says restructuring is going according to plan and says there have been signals of interest toward buying certain parts of its business. If we speculate, for example the lifts & cranes industry has been on the news as one such market sector that needs consolidation in Europe. Skako has three main business areas, concrete, vibration and lifts. The stock posted a nice plus today but is still trading at around a third of book value.

Government of Singapore Corporation Pte Ltd flagged in TDC A/S. Skandinaviska Enskilda Bank launched set of services in offshore Chinese Yuan (CNH) market as the first Nordic bank. This gives exporters and importers a chance to invoice Chinese Yuan. China’s Ministry of Finance said that Rare Earth Element export taxes will be raised in 2011.

Electrolux will close its L'Assomption, Quebec, Canada factory by 2013. The production will be transferred into a new plant, location of which will be announced shortly. L’Assomption plant, which is located in Montreal area, is currently employing around 1300 people. Electrolux will also cut around 800 jobs in Europe the next two years. Reuters reported that Nokia Siemens Network’s purchase of Motorola’s mobile telecom network equipment business was agreed by the EU competition authorities.