Happy New Year with health, imagination and endurance! By January 20th, the takeover of Barba Stathis by Ideal is closed… The first major deal of 2025 will, probably because no one knows what else is cooked, the acquisition of Barba Stathis by Ideal Equity with a seller the investment company CVC. The package includes, as the column has written, and “Golden Zymi”, a subsidiary of Barba Stathis with an excellent course in recent years. The CVC’s decision to sell the subsidiary in the frozen food sector is seen by many as the first step in the transfer of other Vivartia subsidiaries. The latter had passed control of the strong investment group almost five years ago, at the beginning of December 2020, against a total price of EUR 600 million. The agreement with MIG provided for the payment of EUR 175 million in cash and for Vivartia’s debt to be committed of EUR 425 million. In a separate deal Alpha Bank, Eurobank and National had agreed with CVC to release her cross collateral loans, interlocking collateral between Vivartia subsidiaries such as Delta, Barba Stathis, the focus industry, against 75m euros in cash. After Barba Stathis, it is said that the milk sector is the Delta. But let us avoid predictions and be imposed by the climate of days! …but CVC continues investments in Greece CVC may have almost closed the sale of Barba Stathis to Ideal Participations, discussing with Pure Health from Abu Dhabi for the sale of a majority package of Hellenic Healthcare Group (checks among others private health hospitals, Mother, Metropolitan, LETO), but has not stopped looking for opportunities in Greece. Within the year, the new investment of the international group, together with the University of Nicosia, will begin to take shape for the creation of a non-state university in our country, with facilities in the Greek area. The new university will initially have three schools as reported by information that will certainly include medicine and law. Eighteen years after its establishment in Cyprus, Nicosia University currently has 12,000 students. The difficult forecasts for the new year In the last cabinet of 2024 Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis described the major challenges facing the government for this year, focusing on the need to absorb the Recovery Fund so as not to lose community funds. He also presented the milestones set for this year at the level of bills, programmes, etc. Much, however, will depend on developments within and outside Europe since Donald Trump will be installed in the White House by the end of January. Will the new president of the United States start an open war of tariffs that will shake the global economy? Will he press for a peace agreement between Russia and Ukraine to end the war that eats Europe’s flesh? Will Emm. Macron endure the long political instability in France? What do the polls get in Germany? Will the new German government rubberize the famous debt frenzy to stimulate Europe’s largest economy and support major defence investments? Will Israel finish the batch in the Middle East by hitting Iran’s nuclear facilities within the next few months? Very complex puzzle, very difficult predictions for the new year. Russian gas in Europe and scenarios for new pipelines Who could have predicted three years ago that after half a century of effort and good cooperation between the EU and the Soviet Union or Russia, which had led to a 35% share of the European gas market, since yesterday the countries of Europe have not received a cubic inch of Russian gas through pipelines passing through Ukraine. They still receive liquefied natural gas (LNG) from Russia, as the movements at the Greek terminal in Rethymnon show. However, 1 January 2025 is a historic moment for Europe since it has now stopped supplying Russian gas through the pipeline network created over the last fifty years and passed through Ukraine. Greece receives Russian gas and via the TurkStream pipeline, via Turkey, while the same pipeline will cover Hungary’s needs from now on, through Bulgaria. The reversals in Syria along with mobility in the Southeast Mediterranean spark various scenarios for new pipelines. Like the old plan for the Qatar-Turkey pipeline and the latest project for a pipeline linking the deposits of the Southeastern Mediterranean to Cyprus so that liquefied natural gas is then transported to Europe. EYDAP, energy groups and the battle of desalination From the recent statements of EYDAP CEO Harry Sachini we realized that the largest water management company in Greece does not think that desalination can solve the problem with the water supply of Athens, mainly due to the high cost. Therefore, it proposes to extend the external water supply system of the capital to Lake Hangers to ensure sufficient quantities of water. On the table, however, there are plans to build large desalination plants and strong construction and energy groups have been mobilised. Worldwide, the capacity of desalination units approached the end of 2022 the 40 billion cubic meters of water a year. It is less than 1% of about four trillion cubic metres of drinking water consumed worldwide each year. Today nearly 50% of world capacity in desalination plants is concentrated in the Middle East. In countries such as Israel, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait more than 50% of drinking water comes from desalination. The digital secretaries are coming! Within the year that began will also be released the first applications of artificial intelligence (AI) that will function as digital secretaries. In other words, they will be installed on our mobile phone, computer or tablet and will perform some digital tasks on our behalf while we do not use the device. Digital secretaries will, for example, be able to send emails, make a shopping list at the supermarket, fill out forms and even convert our latest calls into text.
In the first deal of 2025 CVC’s new investments the difficult forecasts for the new year the scenarios for new gas pipelines and the battle of desalination
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