By Andrei Skvarsky

Mark Robinson, former head of equity research at Italian bank UniCredit, has resurfaced at Wood & Company, an independent investment bank headquartered in Prague.

Robinson had a six-year stint as a fund manager with JP Morgan before taking the London-based position as global head of equity research and chief strategist at UniCredit, which he vacated this spring in a wave of departures from the Italian firm’s research team.

Wood & Co said Robinson will combine a managerial role with client service in his new role.

Robinson said in a statement Wood & Co is an ideal platform to become one of the leading regional equity houses in Emerging Europe in the next few years. He added: “Russia and Turkey become increasingly more important markets in an Emerging Market context and the expansion strategy of Wood & Co is following an enormous investor demand for a high quality product in these opaque markets.”

Robinson, an Oxford graduate, has been given a no. 3 individual ranking for Emerging European Equity Strategy in the 2010 Thomson Reuters Extel Survey after last year’s no. 1 position.

Wood & Co, which offers a large variety of services and has steel
giant Mittal among its clients, has offices in Bratislava, Warsaw and
Bucharest besides its headquarters in Prague.

By Andrei Skvarsky

Private equity investment firm Mid Europa Partners has bought a strategic stake in Energy 21, a major Czech solar power company, as one of the signs that buyout activity is returning to Central and Eastern Europe (CEE).

Mid Europa, an independent partnership focused on CEE and having about 3.2 billion euros under management and offices in Budapest, London and Warsaw, has also pledged to make further capital injections into Energy 21 to support the extensive growth plans of the Prague-based company, which builds and operates solar power plants, Mid Europa said in a press release.

Mid Europa’s buyout of Energy 21 follows a decision by the partnership to add renewable energy to its core investment sectors and is its first capital input into what its managing partner, Thierry Baudon, has described as “a very promising platform with significant growth prospects”.

Mid Europa did not disclose how much it is to pay for its stake in Energy 21, which has a long-term goal of being one of Europe’s main environment-friendly energy producers.

By Ivan Anderzhanov in Moscow

The business climate in Central & Eastern Europe (CEE) picked up for the first time since the beginning of 2008, according to the latest Thomson Reuters & OeKB CEE Business Climate Index.  The report also indicated that Russia is the top-rated country as far as business expectations are concerned.

The index polling 400 international companies showed improved morale in every country of the region, although it remained negative on balance.

Overall, the results indicate there may be signs of a turnaround in CEE. Investors’ economic expectations are cautiously optimistic for all countries and practically all sectors surveyed. The same applies to business expectations. For the first time since the surveys began in January 2007, investors’ business prospects in CEE were rated higher than the current business situation.

Poland has the best business climate, according to survey respondents, followed by the Czech Republic. On the other hand, Hungary and Ukraine have the worst. Respondents consider the current business situation of their businesses in these two countries to be particularly gloomy: a negative performance has been reported for 46% of their operations in Hungary and 60% in Ukraine. Respondents have significantly improved their business expectations for Russia, which was badly hit by the banking crisis.

The negative value for this indicator developed positively from April to July, with improved business results expected for 27% of business operations in this country over the next six months.

As a result, Russia is the top-rated country as far as business expectations are concerned. Russia is also the only CEE country where the level of investment could increase slightly over the upcoming twelve months: marginally more locations will be expanded (18%) than downsized (17%).

A sector analysis shows that banking is the only sector planning more expansion investment than disinvestment over the next twelve months: 14% of existing bank operations in CEE are to be increased, while 12% will be reduced or closed.