By far the most significant and interesting financial operations in Serbia in 2006 took place in the field of telecommunications. The very size of three basic undertakings - the sale of Mobija 63 to Norway's Telenor (EUR 1513 million) and the third license for mobile telephony to Austria's Mobilkom (EUR 320 million and EUR 1), and finally the purchase of 65 percent of the capital in Banja Luka's Telekom Srpska (EUR 646 million), which was undertaken by the Public Company Telekom Srbija, speaks in support of this assessment. In simplified terms, the gross price of 1,85 billion euros was realized for sales, and 646 million euros were paid for purchases - together, we are talking about input-output operations weighing close to two and a half billion euros. And when you exclude from these figures the part that was "hooked" through BK trade by a group of Austrian investors headed by Martin Šlaf - it could be said without reservation that Serbia's main operations in the past year were in the field of telecommunications - because the "income" was approx. 1,4 billion euros, and almost half of that sum, 646 million euros, was invested in the Republic of Srpska.
It is normal that these operations attracted a lot of public attention and it is logical that, on the one hand, there are observers who believe that the Government of Serbia sold well and bought cheaply, and others who, again, think that we could have sold better and bought cheaper . The third, again, believe that the best thing is that, finally, the practice of reinvesting part of the capital acquired through the sale of state property, even abroad - so that it is not all spent on mere public consumption or on projects that return money in a hundred years. Especially since Serbia is facing an investment peak, which can hardly be carried out on the internal market without disturbing the macroeconomic balance.
STRATEGY: True, a certain political strategy of the Government of Serbia can be seen in all these telecommunication operations - but its presence is also logical or, to be more precise, it was inevitable, since these are such big deals in such an important economic area. However, even the strictest critics of that strategy do not dispute its foundations. For example, when it comes to the sale of Mobi 63, all major political parties, as explicitly as possible tacitly, accepted the "cutting" of the knot in which the Karić brothers had tied the state with various dizzying legal exhibitions during the Milošević era and later (so the impotence of the state became more an infectious and rotting moral problem of the whole society, than a political problem of the parties to which Karić's PSS competed). After all, the fact that the (perpetually and legally disputed) largest domestic mobile operator (063) was eventually bought and gallantly paid for by a truly continental, powerful and respectable company from our long-time friend Norway was unanimously welcomed. The Government of Serbia passed without major criticism regarding the sale of the third license for mobile telephony, although it had to carry out the "rehabilitation" of the Roshomoniad over Mobtel with certain concessions to a rather controversial world broker such as Martin Šlaf - primarily because he is in our in the case, he also worked for a fairly solid Austrian state telephone company and that, by buying Karić's share in Mobtel on May 15, 2005, he finally made some kind of review of the internal situation in that company, and gave it to the Government of Serbia for inspection.
In the third case, when the Belgrade Telekom bought a majority stake in the Banja Luka Telekom, offering at the tender a price one third higher than the next competitor, it can be concluded that the Government of Serbia was motivated not only by economic but also by "national-political" reasons, when, in its capacity owner of Telekom Srbija, approved the deal - but critical analyzes must be limited mainly to the amount of the price that will be paid - because the direction of the basic decision is economically acceptable, since in Serbia itself, nor in the region, unfortunately, there is no business with similar profit prospects. Namely, it would be nice if someone could prove that those 646 million euros could be invested in a project in Serbia itself, 130.000 jobs could be created (for example, 5000 euros per job) and in the next fifteen years, an advance would be obtained. However, neither the Government of Serbia nor its critics have apparently been able to find such a profitable project in sight.
However, the question remains whether the money from this business can be "returned" in ten years (as is now estimated in Telekom Srbija), when data show that the annual profit of Telekom Srpska last year was 40 million euros, and this year, let it be , and 50 million. Well, if you take 65 percent of that profit - you come to, for example, about 33 million. So if you then divide 646 million, just for the sake of illustration, by 33 - this game will lead you to the conclusion that it will take you almost 20 years to return your investment. It simply means that Telekom Srbija will have to work hard in BiH in order to double its current annual profit in the next decade.
JOBS YEARS: So, if we are talking about three big state jobs that for many reasons deserve to be declared "jobs of the year", let's recall, in short, how they were carried out.
The basic contours of the Mobi 63 operation were certainly verified on January 12, 2006, when the Government of Serbia decided that PTT Serbia would take over the bank claims that existed against Mobtel, which were "hanging" in the air after the license of this company for dealing in mobile by telephone (December 29, 2005). That decision became visible when, on January 17, Prime Minister Vojislav Koštunica and a team of ministers of the Government of Serbia held a meeting in Belgrade with the Vice Chancellor and Minister of Transport of Austria, Hubert Gorbach, at the head of a delegation of investors in BK Trade, which included Martin Šlaf, Jozef Taus and Herbert Court. Basically, the arrangement was activated on the same day, and this can be seen from the fact that on January 17, the Public Company PTT Serbia signed with Hipo Alpe - Adrija Bank and Raiffeisen Bank "a loan agreement for taking over the claims of those banks from Mobtel" in the amount of 71,4 million euros (the new loan was given for 15 years, with a three-year grace period and 4,3 percent annual interest), and the state, as the sole owner of that company, "assumed" the guarantee in the same deal of the previous loan, Mobtel assets valued at 270 million euros.
However, for a few more months, we worked on specifying the "details", which are very important and expensive in such large-scale transactions. Thus, the final agreement (14 documents) between the Government of Serbia and the consortium that bought BK Trade, headed by Šlaf, was concluded on April 4. The contracting parties decided to first establish a (legally) completely new company, Mobi 63, with a capital of around 130 million euros, in which Šlaf entered with 30 percent of the capital, and the state of Serbia with 70 percent. Since Serbia actually contributed the real capital of Mobtel to the new company, and Šlaf owned BK Trade, the Government had to conclude an agreement with PTT Serbia and pay 91 million euros "in the name of the transfer of equipment", plus eight million euros for voluntary pensions employee fund of the same public company (in the name of virtual free shares for the participation of PTT Serbia in Mobtel), and to withdraw its lawsuits in domestic and foreign courts. Schlaf, for his part, "took over" Mobtel's debt to Ericsson in the amount of 30 million euros and withdrew his claim before the arbitration in Zurich. Thus, the legal premise for the sale of Mobi 63 was created - and the minimum price of the company of 800 million euros was agreed upon, which included the price of the license of 320 million euros, and apparently the claim for unpaid dividends to PTT Serbia of 52 million euros. At the same time, Schlaf practically set a higher minimum price - because he specified that, if the tender for the sale of Mobi 63 does not reach a total of more than 1,1 billion euros, he is not obliged to sell his 30 percent co-ownership.
THIRD LICENSE: However, representatives of the Norwegian Telenor at the auction for the purchase of Mobi 63, held on July 31, 2006, in competition with the Austrian Mobilkom, bid a price of one billion and 513 million euros, of which Serbia collected 1155 million euros, and the Austrian businessman Martin Šlaf became heavier by approximately 360 million euros. Finance Minister Mlađan Dinkić, who for years advocated for the unraveling of the Mobtel case and because of that "warred" with Karić even before they founded their own political party and in some polls they were allegedly "stronger" than Kostunica's DSS - is immediately on the basis of those para began to build the now well-known National Investment Program.
The auction for the sale of the third license for mobile telephony (announced on September 63), which was won by Mobilcom Austria with a bid of 19 million and 320 euro (as announced on November 1), was apparently connected with the operation Mobi 6 and Martin Schlaff. . Despite the grumbling of some observers, this achieved price can also be considered very good, because the third license in Croatia was paid 23 million euros, in Slovenia 36,5 million euros, in Slovakia 3,9 million euros, in Bulgaria 21 million euros, in Romania 15 million euros. From these data, it can be seen that what the Government of Serbia received for the third license for mobile telephony was 3,2 times more than what the five mentioned countries received for the third license (99,4 million euros), with five times more inhabitants. As the Austrians announced after the acquisition of the third license, their goal is to win 25 percent of the Serbian market in five years, and to achieve that plan they will invest close to 300 million euros and employ 700 people.
The purchase of Telekom Srpska was made public on December 5, when Dodik's government in Banja Luka approved the sale of 65 percent of the capital to Telekom Srbija for 646 million euros, as it was determined that another competitor, Telekom Austria, offered a price 179 million euros lower. By the way, we are talking about a company that has 350.000 subscribers in the fixed network and 630.000 in mobile telephony, as well as 30.000 users on internet cables. In 2005, Telekom Srpska achieved a profit of 40 million euros - and it has a license to operate throughout Bosnia and Herzegovina.
