Polish budget gap closing endangered

Poland ties to close its growing budget gap by offering stakes in power, oil, copper, phone and insurance companies. However this task becomes more difficult, which is shown by the Enea S.A. case.

Enea S.A. Poland’s third-biggest power supplier has slumped by 9.8 per cent during yesterday’s Warsaw Stock Exchange session, finishing at 19.87 zloty (4,6 Euro) level, which is the worst since the end of July. Such situation occurred due to RWE AG decision to abandon the bid for 67 per cent of Enea’s shares.
According to data on the Treasury Ministry’s Web site the stake was valued at 6.3 billion złoty (1.5 billion Euro) at yesterday’s closing price, making it the biggest state sale to a single investor since 2000. However RWE AG was not prepared to offer such money.

Its decision to pull out of the deal convinced other investors, who wanted to earn on this transaction to sell their shares, causing the 9.8 per cent fall that we have seen yesterday. For this reason Treasury Ministry decided to put on hold its selling plans. “Poland may restart the Enea S.A sale in late November or early December to get a better price” - Deputy Treasury Ministry Jan Bury said in an interview yesterday.

According to Bloomberg Polish government is ready to sell for 22.30 zloty, which is a three-months average price of Enea’s shares.