Paneuropean negotiations in `final stage’

By Hamza Hendawi

GREECE’S Interamerican Group is seeking to buy a majority stake in Nicos Shacolas’ Paneuropean Insurance in takeover negotiations which have entered their “final stage”.

In an announcement made to the Cyprus Stock Exchange yesterday, Shacolas said the Greek conglomerate planned to make a public offer for the 55 per cent stake it sought.

Shacolas and his family are widely believed to own anywhere between 30 and 40 per cent of Paneuropean, the parent company of Interamerican Insurance and Philiki Insurance.

The three titles rose in yesterday’s trade on the back of the Shacolas announcement, helping the official all-share index to rise by 0.39 per cent to close at 90.32. Traded value stood at £2.02 million.

Trade on the three Shacolas titles was worth £787,316, or nearly 35 per cent of the market’s entire traded value. The insurance sub-index recorded the highest rise among the market’s seven sectors, 1.33 per cent, to close at 69.67.

Paneuropean rose by two cents to close at £1.24, while Interamerican rose by 1.5 cents and Philiki by three cents to close at £1.15 and £1.06 respectively.

News of the planned takeover of the Paneuropean Group first surfaced about seven weeks ago, triggering a wave of interest in the three titles.

But long spells of silence on whether the negotiations were making progress have on occasion dampened market interest and led prices to fall.

Earlier this week, Shacolas wrote to the Cyprus Stock Exchange saying that the negotiations to sell Paneuropean had made definite progress.

A takeover of the local insurance giant by Greece’s Interamerican would be the second takeover of a major Cypriot concern by a Greek company. Earlier this year, Greece’s Alpha Credit Bank bought a controlling share of Lombard NatWest Bank and renamed it Alpha Bank Limited for what was reported at the time to be around £30 million.

The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.