"Istrabenz" to sell stocks of "Droga Kolinska" or "Petrol"

Supervisory Board of petroleum company "Istrabenz" gave the green light yesterday (November 19, 2008) to the administration to sell the stocks of "Droga Kolinska" or "Petrol".

According to the web site of the Ljubljana Stock Exchange, the administration will make the decision about which stocks to sell.

"Istrabenz" owns 95% of stocks of "Droga Kolinska" and about 10% of stocks of "Petrol".

"Istrabenz" Group registered 472.9m EUR worth of sales incomes in the period January-September 2008, which is 5% more than in the same period last year.

The company increased its profit from operations by 15% in that period, reaching 29.9m EUR. The net profit amounted to 12.2m EUR and it was lower than planned because of the higher costs of interests and because the sale of stocks of "Mercator" has not been realized yet.

President of the Supervisory Board of "Istrabenz", Janko Kosmina, said that the company was forced to introduce some measures because of the crisis and much too ambitious plans.

- Unfortunately, we will, therefore, have to sell some of our investments - said Kosmina for Radio Slovenia.

President of the Administration of "Istrabenz", Igor Bavčar, said that "other companies also have problems and each company solves them in its own way - some of them are dismissing the workers, while the others sell their investments".