ALIENS OUT & ABOUT

The Company Predicted That In 2011, Istanbul Will Be The City With The Biggest Growth In Tourism Expenditures — Up 30.1% Compared With The Year Before.

Istanbul was named as one of the planet’s best performing visitor destinations in 2011, primarily based on Mastercard’s new Worldwide Index of World Destination Towns, revealed on Wednesday. The company anticipated that in 2011, Istanbul will be the city with the largest growth in tourism expenditures — up 30.1% compared with the previous year.

The Greek govt agreed on Monday (June 6th) to sell its ten percent stake in Hellenic Telecomms (OTE) to Germany’s Deutsche Telekom for 400m Euro Bucks. After the deal, Greece will hold ten percent and one voting share in OTE, while Deutsche Telekom will control forty percent plus one vote. The remaining fifty percent are in the hands of world and Greek prescribed shareholders.

The Albanian lek hit an all-time record low Monday (June 6th), changing hands at 142.55 lek per EU Dollar. Matched against the start of 2011, the cost of the EU Dollar has increased by four leks.

The official minimum wage in Bulgaria will be raised from around 120 euros to 135 EU Bucks, Prime minister Boyko Borisov announced on Sunday (June 5th). He revealed the govt will start procedures to implement the hike, which will take several weeks.

Internet giant Google will open an office in Zagreb by the end of June, Croatian Times reported on Wednesday (June 1st). The office will serve the company’s operations and provide local support to advertisers in Croatia, Serbia and Slovenia. Also, Croatia has a large amount of beautiful summer destinations for visit. Many that come here, want buy some Croatia real estate. One of the few places left in Europe where buying a home or apartment close to the sea is still affordable, Croatia enjoys popularity with property customers from around the world who appreciate the chance to have a house in a gorgeous, mostly unspoiled country and also by the fascinating potential investments returns.

It could have been a daunting prospect for the 1st foreign owners who started buying property in Croatia in the latter 1990s : selling property was a novel experience for many Croats and there would be no help about what to do or where to go. However now things have changed considerably and there is a good deal of information available online about how to buy and how to navigate the bureaucracy.

One feature of the bureaucracy which is still proving troublesome however is the requirement for foreigners to obtain government authorization to own a property which can take anything from eighteen months to three years to obtain, although it isn’t denied. This situation will continue for ECU citizens until 2009 when this law is due to be ditched as part of the ECU advent arrangements. Till then customers have a second option of setting up a Croatian limited company which allows the buyer to have instant ownership. There are numerous corporations who will perform this service including lawyers, accountants and some estate agencies. The following table describes the pros and cons of the company route versus the non-public route.

An oddity of the Croatian property market is that when folk would like to sell, they don’t often give their property to one estate agent to market on an exclusive basis. Rather more likely the vendor will be offering it to two or three agencies to sell, though it is not unusual for the property to be offered to 15 or twenty agencies! And anyway, the property frequently finishes up in the hands of multiple agencies as the agencies who agree to try and market the property often pass it onto other agencies to maximise the number of people who will hear of the property. The agents share the commission when the house is sold, so this arrangement is in the vendors interest while it usually implies that he doesn’t have any concept who is advertising his property, and more confusingly at what price it is being offered.

To be fair to the agents, the vendor often adds to the puzzlement by telling the agents to “add your commission on top”. For some agents this suggests add 2%, but sadly for others it means adding twenty p.c. or more! Just to contribute to the perplexity, there are some unscrupulous agencies who pilfer the pictures and text from another agency’s web site and upload it onto their own site offering it at a very low price (which the seller would never accept) to draw in customers into the agency. It’s easy to spot these rogue agencies because they know less than nothing about the property and if they do take you to see the property, they will not be in a position to show you within!

The USAID’s Competitiveness Project Invention Centre has launched a new model to finance business start-ups in Macedonia. The 1st Business Angel Network is comprised of so-called “angel” investors — businessmen and others pleased to invest money, information, talents and social capital in fresh and cutting edge business ideas with high potential. The network in Macedonia already has ten members, who are reviewing about 12 business proposals.

Athens hosted a Hellenic-Chinese Business Forum on Monday (June 6th), drawing senior officers from over sixty leading Chinese firms attempting to find business ventures in Greece. Greece was represented by 187 companies. Areas of mutual interest include electrical and mechanical equipment production, ship-building, energy, environmental technologies, telecomms, property and tourism.

Many Albanians working in Greece are choosing to come home amid grave prospects and huge job cuts in the crisis-hit neighbor. Up to date information of the Chamber of Industry and Commerce in Gjirokastra showed clearly that during the past two months, 40 smaller enterprises have opened in the city. According to experts, these businesses were opened by returning expats, who are now investing their savings in Albania.

Kosovo’s Ministry of Industrial Development announced on Friday (June third) that two companies will be competing for the privatisation of Kosovo’s Post and Telecommunication Company (PTK). These are Croatia’s Hrvatski Telekom, which is the property of Germany’s Deutsche Telekom, and Telekom Austria. Albania’s Albtelecom, Egypt’s Oraskom and Yemen’s Saba Phone also filed documents in the tender for the state’s seventy five percent stake, but did not qualify, writes tagza.com.

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Cowboys and Aliens “Aliens Attack” 2011 official movie trailer clip

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