SLOVENIA

Slovenia issues EUR 1.5bn bond at record low interest rate

Slovenia successfully completed a EUR 1.5 billion ten-year eurobond issue, leveraging market appetite for fixed assets to secure a record-low coupon interest rate of 0.275%. The last bond issue a year ago came with a coupon rate of 1.188%. (STA)

Court upholds Mercator share seizure

The Ljubljana District Court has fully upheld the Competition Protection Agency's decision to temporarily seize Mercator shares from the retailer's owner, Croatian group Agrokor, rejecting the latter's appeal. (STA)

Jobless total up in December due to fixed-term jobs elapse

The number of people out of a job registered with Slovenia's Employment Service increased in monthly comparison in December as many fixed-term contracts expired at the end of the year. A total of 75,292 persons were registered as unemployed at the end of December, up 4% from November but down 4.1% from December 2018. (STA)

INTERNATIONAL MARKETS

Dow and S&P 500 dip as investors weigh risk of possible US-Iran conflict; European stocks saw light losses

Stocks wavered on Tuesday as Wall Street assessed the growing geopolitical risks stemming from U.S.-Iran tensions along with better-than-expected data on the economy. The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed 119.70 points lower, or 0.4% at 28,583.68. The S&P 500 pulled back 0.3% to 3,237.18. The Nasdaq Composite ended the day just below the flatline at 9,068.58.
Micron jumped more than 8% while Western Digital surged 6.8% after an analyst at Cowen upgraded the stocks to outperform from market perform, citing a potential recovery in the memory chip market. Bank of America and J.P. Morgan Chase were downgraded by a UBS analyst, sending their shares down 0.7% and 1.7%, respectively. The analyst said investors should wait for a better entry point on Bank of America. As for J.P. Morgan, the analyst noted “the bar has been raised for further outperformance.”
The pan-European Stoxx 600 was provisionally 0.3% lower at the closing bell, with tech stocks up more than 1.3% while oil and gas stocks gave back 0.5%, having previously surged on the back of U.S.-Iran escalations.
British luxury carmaker Aston Martin plunged more than 16% after issuing a profit warning on Tuesday morning.
Shares of UBS rose by 2.6% after it was reported that the lender would cut up to 500 private banking jobs as part of a business overhaul.

SERBIA

Slightly over 70 companies remain to be privatized in Serbia

There are slightly over 70 companies remaining to be privatized in Serbia, but around 30 of them cannot be subject to advertising and privatization due to unresolved property-legal relations, court procedures or other problems, says the state secretary at the Ministry of Economy, Dragan Stevanovic. When it comes to the sector of privatization and bankruptcy proceedings, we have made some serious progress – Stevanovic told Tanjug. He announced that the Bankruptcy Supervision Agency would continue selling companies' property in 2020 and said that there had been more than 100 ads in 2019 and that the funds realized through the sale of bankruptcy debtors were measured in billions of dinars. (Ekapija)

TurkStream gas to arrive in second half of 2020

The first quantities of TurkStream gas will start flowing through the trunk gas pipeline in Serbia in the second half of this year, most likely in October, at the start of the next gas season, Serbian Minister of Mining and Energy Aleksandar Antic announced at the weekend. The laying of the 403 km gas pipeline in Serbia is finished, Antic told Tanjug. What remains to be done is to complete the measuring stations and a large compression station near Zabari, northeastern Serbia, which will make the gas pipeline fully functional, he said. (Tanjug)

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