Greece's biggest company is leaving the country, drinks bottler Coca Cola Hellenic (CCH) said on Thursday in announcing it will move to Switzerland and list its shares in London, dealing a blow to the debt-crippled Greek economy.
The material impact on Greece may be limited its Greek plants will go on working and CCH said the five percent of its business that the world's second-ranked Coke bottler has in Greece will be unaffected. But analysts quickly saw it as bad news for a nation struggling to compete inside the euro zone.
CCH, which already has secondary stock market listings in London and New York [CCH 20.35 -0.71 (-3.37%) ], said in a bourse filing in Athens that shareholders, most of whom are abroad, will exchange all their stock for shares in Coca Cola HBC, based in Switzerland. That stock will have its primary quote in London [CCB.L 14.6894 --- UNCH ].
"A primary listing on Europe's biggest and most liquid stock exchange reflects better the international character of Coca Cola Hellenic's business activities and shareholder base," the company said in its regulatory statement.
The firm, in which The Coca-Cola Company [COKE 69.27 0.61 (+0.89%) ] of the United States has a 23-percent stake, bottles Coke and other drinks in 28 countries from Russia to Nigeria. About 95 percent of its shareholders and business activity are outside Greece.
"This transaction makes clear business sense," chief executive Dimitris Lois told analysts in a conference call. An overwhelming majority of shareholders have already accepted moving a company which has long complained about Greek taxes.
Analyst Manos Hatzidakis of Beta Securities in Athens said that the move made sense for the firm, which follows Greek dairy group FAGE this month in seeking a low-tax, low-volatility haven for its corporate base in FAGE's case Luxembourg.
"The Greek bourse is losing a very good company and the London Stock Exchange is gaining a very important group," said Hatzidakis. "It's very bad news for the Greek economy and bourse."
Continued on Page 47
THE Elysee Palace was hit with a sex scandal yesterday when it was alleged in a book by two prominent French political journalists that Valerie Trierweiler, the country's first lady, was conducting affairs with the socialist Francois Hollande and a minister from the previous right-wing administration while married to a third man.
Busy girl, with a passion for her avocation.
A lawyer for Ms Trierweiler, 47, hit back last night at the unauthorised biography, La Frondeuse (The Rebellious One), which is published today, saying that it was based on a collection of "author assertions backed by unproven rumours" and that Ms Trierweiler was planning to sue for breach of privacy.
The book alleges that Ms Trierweiler, a mother-of-three, began the affairs while Mr Hollande was still living with Segolene Royal - the mother of his four children and a former presidential candidate - and while Patrick Devedjian, who is a senior member of the opposition and close friend of Nicolas Sarkozy, was living with his wife of more than 30 years. Mr Hollande and Ms Royal did not publicly end their relationship until this year, but the book claims he kept a mistress for many years.
Ms Trierweiler filed for divorce in 2007 from her husband, Denis, a fellow journalist at Paris Match; the separation was completed in 2010.
She is deeply unpopular in opinion polls. She has been described as the "First Concubine" by the French media, who have delighted in the mutual loathing between her and Ms Royal.
With Ms Trierweiler, who has her own office in the Elysee Palace, fiercely disputing the allegations, the book is likely to raise further questions about the private lives of French politicians.
Continued on Page 47
[Ynet] Twelve members of a terror cell recently exposed in La Belle France were planning to travel to Syria and join Jihadist groups there, apparently in order to take part in the fighting, French prosecutor Francois Molins said at a Gay Pareepresser.
He added that one of the suspects recently visited Egypt and Tunisia. Earlier on Thursday, five of the suspects were released. The remaining seven will appear in court later today.
Members of the group had assembled enough material to make a bomb the same size as explosives used in a deadly wave of attacks in Gay Paree in the mid-1990s, Gay Paree prosecutor Francois Molins added. The weekend police swoop, in which another suspect was rubbed out as he fired at police, dismantled "a terrorist group that is probably the most dangerous (seen in La Belle France) since 1996," Molins told a news conference on Thursday.
Continued on Page 47
[Al Ahram] Belgian police said Wednesday they had cooled for a few years You have the right to remain silent... seven suspected members of a terror cell aiming to "indoctrinate young Brussels Mohammedans" and "send them to combat zones" in north Africa.
"Seven people of Moroccan and African origin [including] one Belgian were cooled for a few years You have the right to remain silent... and placed in jug pending questioning," said a statement from the federal prosecution service.
They were to go before a magistrate who would decide whether or not to detain them, a front man told AFP.
The arrests followed six separate raids in Brussels where computers and files were also seized.
The raids stemmed from an investigation that followed the August 2011 arrest of a Belgian of Moroccan origin at the Somali border linked with a regional Al-Qaeda offshoot, the prosecutors added.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
Greece's biggest company is leaving the country, drinks bottler Coca Cola Hellenic (CCH) said on Thursday in announcing it will move to Switzerland and list its shares in London, dealing a blow to the debt-crippled Greek economy. 
THE Elysee Palace was hit with a sex scandal yesterday when it was alleged in a book by two prominent French political journalists that Valerie Trierweiler, the country's first lady, was conducting affairs with the socialist Francois Hollande and a minister from the previous right-wing administration while married to a third man.
[Al Ahram] Belgian police said Wednesday they had 
