In Brief
Greece’s weak business climate improving Greece is improving its business environment but has a long way to go to catch up with other European nations, according to the author of a World Bank study. The «Doing Business» survey, which measures the climate for small and medium-sized companies in 181 countries, showed Greece has the worst regulatory framework of any developed nation in the 30-member Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development. Tangled red tape and lengthy approval times left Greece ranked 96th in the annual report published last week, beneath Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands. That was a rise of 10 places from the previous year, thanks mainly to reforms by Greece’s conservative government, according to Dahlia Khalifa, co-author of the report. «The improvement this year has been significant and Greece is on track to make greater improvements in the future,» Khalifa said in a phone interview from Washington. «The government is pursuing reforms and it has an aggressive agenda.» (Reuters) Coke bottler plans to close Romanian plant The Coca-Cola Hellenic Bottling Company (CCHBC) the world’s No 2 bottler of Coke drinks, plans to shut down one of its five plants in Romania in a bid to save costs, a source close to the situation said yesterday. «CCHBC plans to close down its plant in Oradea, which has two production lines, by November and some 100 people will be affected,» the source, who declined to be named, told Reuters, adding, «The employees will either move to other positions within the firm or be made redundant and receive the compensation Romanian law provides.» The plant, a small one in Romania, will continue to operate as a distribution center for CCHBC products, they added. CCHBC, 23.3 percent owned by Coca-Cola, has said sales volume in Romania posted high single-digit percentage growth in the second quarter of the year. (Reuters) Drug ruling GlaxoSmithKline Plc, Europe’s largest drugmaker, may have violated European Union rules by preventing Greek wholesalers from reselling its medications in more profitable countries, the EU’s highest court said. The European Court of Justice in Luxembourg in a mixed ruling yesterday said that Glaxo and other dominant drug companies can’t refuse «ordinary orders by wholesalers» to prevent so-called parallel sales. The court referred the case back to Greece to determine whether the wholesalers’ orders in the case are «out of the ordinary.» Drugmakers have for decades fought the practice by which wholesalers buy medicines at state-regulated prices in countries such as Greece and then sell them in more expensive markets. Lawyers expected the case to clarify the rights of drugmakers to control supplies to parallel traders. (Bloomberg) Clinic acquisition Euromedica SA, a Greek healthcare provider, bought a 60 percent stake in the Larissa Clinic in central Greece, the company said yesterday in a bourse filing. Euromedica will pay 450,000 euros for the majority stake, the filing said. The remaining 40 percent is held by radiologists at the clinic. Euromedica now operates 49 medical facilities in Greece. (Bloomberg)
