11.01.2011

Markets were given the green light for some appriciation and Nordic exchanges put their feet on the pedal for a near 2 percent gain. Floods in Australia are worsening and economic impact is severe as well. Portuguese Prime Minister said that Portugal will not ask for a bailout. Not long after that Portuguese Central Bank slashed its GDB forecast for 2011 down from zero to minus 1.3 percent. Belgium is still without a government and yields are rising fast for its debt as well. Japan joined in to support Euro-zone, saying it will buy a large chunk of upcoming Irish bond offering.

Orkla ASA and China National Bluestar Group Co. Ltd quickly got the agreement in place for Orkla to sell Elkem to Bluestar. The sales price is 2 million US Dollars and it includes Elkem Silicon Materials, Elkem Foundry Products, ElkemCarbon and Elkem Solar divisions. Rumours of negotiations forced a trading halt in the shares of Orkla yesterday, together with a stock exchange release confirming the (obviously very late stage) negotiations. Orkla was down slightly as investors had been hoping for a slightly better price and were selling the news.

Biotie Therapies and privately owned Synosia Therapeutics headquartered from Switzerland (but with operations mainly in San Francisco) are planning to join forces. The companies tout that the collaboration, which is subject to shareholder approval, will create a leading central nervous system focused biotech company. Biotie will issue new shares and give those to current owners of Synopsia, whose ownership portion will be their capital contribution. Synopsia will become a wholly owner subsidiary of Biotie. Synopsia owners will actually get a little more than 50% ownership in the new company. The new pipeline will consist of the close to market Nalmefene for alcohol dependance from Biotie and six CNS compounds from Synosia in early clinical development. Two inflammation compounds from Biotie, that are ready to enter phase 2 and are seen to contain major potential, will be a little bit of lame ducks and Biotie will seek partnering opportunities. Biotie stock was up 15 percent on heavy volume.

Schibsted Media Group has initiated merger dicussions with Media Norge ASA. Schibsted already holds s 84.2 percent of Media Norge. Schibsted was up more than 5% aided by positive comments about the company's prospects.

Construction equipment rental services firm Cramo acquires 100 percent of the shares in Theisen Baumaschinen AG from a privately-pwner holding company and in doing so gains access to Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Hungary. The purchase price is around 47 milliion Euro, paid mostly in cash together with a 7 million worth of new shares issues.

General insurance company Tryg was up nearly 5 percent after CEO Stine Bosse resigned citing family reasons and desire to do supervisory board work. SAS advanced on better than expected traffic figures from December. Neste Oil made it to the list of six remaining Public Eye Awards candidates (an award from Greenpeace and Berne Declaration claiming ills created by profit-seeking) for the most socially irresponsible company in the world.

Neurosearch was up marginally as the company announced personnell cuts of 20 percent of its employees. SeaBird expects fourth quarter result to be lower than on Q3 instead of on same level as previously expected. This caused the stock to retreat nearly 10 percent.

Stora Enso is investing to a new containerboard machine at its Ostroleka Mill in Poland. The investment project is worth 285 million Euro, signalling the company feels confident enough to shift from long-standing policy of current capacity usage optimization to trying to build profitable growth.