Austria's top economic news - January 18

Technology group Andritz said it has received a EUR 65m order for the construction of a steel producing plant in Malaysia. The facility should start operations by the end of 2012.
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C-Quadrat Kapitalanlage AG, part of  C-Quadrat Investment AG, boosted its assets under management by 26% to EUR 3.341bn in 2010. The new business volume rose 23% to EUR 804m.
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Insolvent A-Tec is said to be planning to divest Indian boiler producer AE&E Chennai Works Ltd to South Korean holding Doosan. The latter was initially interested in AE&E, the machinery group of A-Tec, as a whole. The purchase price is estimated at EUR 20m.
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Oberbank said it raised its pretax profit by 24.4% to EUR 115m in 2010. Operating profit rose 19.3% to EUR 218m. The bank plans to continue its expansion in 2011. The good performance in 2010 was mainly boosted by the interest income of Oberbank. The cost-income ratio fell by 3 percentage points to 50%. The figures are preliminary.
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Volksbank International (VBI), soon to be sold by troubled OeVAG, is said to have ended 2010 with an operating loss, Standard reported quoting bank sources. The loss was triggered by non-serving credits in Romania worth EUR 100m, the daily said. However, OeVAG rejected the report, saying that VBI has closed 2010 with positive results at every country apart from Romania, where only one-off effects were registered.