PKN Orlen-MOL to sign cooperation agreement today

Today, the presidents of the Polish and Hungarian national oil giants PKN Orlen and MOL will sign a cooperation agreement in the presence of their respective Prime Ministers, which will be the first move towards their merger. "We want to begin the whole process before we join the EU," said PKN Orlen president Zbigniew Wróbel. According to sources, Orlen would like for each company to acquire a 10-15% stake in the other, then they would transfer the shares to a newly created venture before finally merging into one company. The whole process should take up to three years. The presence of the Prime Ministers shows that the move has the full backing of the Polish and Hungarian governments. The agreement between Orlen and MOL envisages that a third company will join them in the future, and most likely it will be Austrian OMV. (Rzeczpospolita, p. B5) M.M.