- Central and Eastern Europe: in its "privatisation chronicals", the French daily, Les Echos turns to the main ongoing privatisation operations in the Ceecs: i) Poland: - associated with the Polish group ELEKTRIM, FRANCE TELECOM is in exclusive negotiations for the immediate takeover of a 35% stake and later a 51% stake in the fixed public telephone operator TPSA; - CITIBANK has taken control of Poland's third largest bank HANDLOWY BANK; - DEUTSCHE BANK has decided not to take control of the Bank of Gdansk and has sold its stake to BANCO COMMERCIAL PORTUGUESE which , associated with the group EUREKO, takes control; - France's ACCOR is in line for the planned sale o the capital of ORBIS, public hotel chain that holds a 40% stake of the national market; ii) Hungary: air FRANCE, LUFTHANSA (Germany), BRITISH AIRWAYS and KLM (The Netherlands) are candidates for the purchase of a 15% stake in the national air transport firm MALEV; - iii) Slovakia: the Italian group UNICREDITO is to purchase Slovakia's sixth largest bank, in the process of being privatised; - the Slovak Government has announced the launch of the privatisation process of its fixed telephone operator; iv) - Czech Republic: the Czech Government has handed over control of the bank IKB, in difficulty, to the Belgian group KBC and announced the sale, this year, of 60% of the capital of KOMERCIN BANKA, the last large pubic bank; - v) Baltic States: following the withdrawal of the Swedish electricity group VATTENFALL, France's DALKIA, associated with VIVENDI and EDF, should be granted, for 150 million euro, the heating network of the city of Kaunas, Lithuania's second largest city; - vi) Bulgaria: UNICREDITO (Italy) and ALLIANZ (Germany) are in exclusive negotiations for the purchase of the country's main bank, BULBANK; - vii) the Romanian Government has announced a 1.2 bn euro privatisation programme in 2000 of the Agricultural Bank; - SOCIETE GENERALE (France) has taken over the Bulgarian development bank and a consortium led by GE CAPITAL (United States) that of POST BANK; ; viii) Russia: the Italian group MERLONI has paid 130 million euro for control of STIUVOL, the country's main electrical household goods distributor with a market share of 40%; - ix) Ukraine: the government has announced the re-launch of the privatisation process of several privatisations, notably in the field of energy and communications (UKRTELEKOM).