Austrian economic news in a flash

(The most important economic news in Austria from 11 October) 


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Austria's Social Democrats (SPOe) has lost majority in the recent Vienna's local elections, initial forecasts show. At the same same, the far-right Freedom Party (FPOe) has gained more than 12 percentage points to 27.2% of the votes and thus ranked second. SPOe, however, has ruled out a coalition between the two parties.
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Raiffeisen Bank International, which has emerged from the merger of Raiffeisen Zentralbank and its eastern European subsidiary Raiffeisen International (RI), has started officially operations as of October 11. The company's capital hike has also come into force. The bank will have a free float of 21.5%, compared to the 27.2% of RI before. The merger targets optimisation of the group's structure.

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The merger between Investkredit and OeVAG will result into further 100 job cuts, WirtschaftsBlatt reported. However, the companies will aim to not carry out any forced redundancies. The merger is expected to take effect in the first quarter of 2011, with some EUR 84m in synergy effects projected next year.
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Austrian Airlines, or AUA, said it has raised the number of passengers by 11.2% year-on-year to 1.1m in September 2010. The seat load factor rose 3 pct points to 81%. The number of passengers between January and September grew 10.3% to 8.4m.
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Real estate company Conwert plans to focus on stock repurchases rather than on the acquisition of new properties in the near future, newly-appointed chairman Johannes Meran said. The move is due to the extremely low stock price compared to its internal value.
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The number of passenger car registrations in Austria grew 5.9% to 28,115 in September, Statistik Austria said. From January to September 2010 the number rose 1.5% in annual terms.