KGHM stock will not be used to bolster sluggish state concerns

Copper and silver miner KGHM has not heard of any government plans to give away its shares to help restructure ailing state-owned firms, Chief Executive Stanislaw Speczik said on Thursday. Ministers' recent statements that the government would use state-owned shares in listed companies to raise the capital of the troubled coal mining and shipbuilding industries had sparked fears that KGHM stock would be dumped on the market. Speczik said KGHM had no plans to pay a dividend from the parent company's 2002 net profit of zl. 254 million. At the consolidated level KGHM had a net loss of zl. 270 million as losses at Dialog wiped out the entire profit from its core copper and silver mining business. (Reuters) J.K.