Orlen's new strategy earmarks EUR 3 billion for takeovers

The concern plans to spend EUR 3 billion on mergers and takeovers by 2009, while the capital spending in that period will amount to zł.13.6 billion. Another zł.10 billion will be consumed over the next ten years by the expansion of the firm's extraction activity. Thanks to this new strategy Orlen wants to further expand and to improve its effectiveness. The company projects that its EBIDTA (operational profit plus amortization) in 2009 will amount to zł.10 billion, as compared to zł.6 billion envisaged in the previous strategy. The key thing for Orlen's management board is now gaining access to oil deposits. At the moment the company's main source of oil are Russian providers, but the concern wants to change that and to increase oil extraction to at least 4.3 million tons a year by 2015. The new strategy will be implemented in two stages. The first one will consist of selecting and choosing the acquisition targets and will last till 2009. In the second stage Orlen wants to assume the role of an operator. (Puls Biznesu, pp. 1,10) A.F.