It is estimated that some 30,000 – 50,000 cars could be produced a year but a more sensible figure in the first year of production would be 10,000 cars.

“We currently produce 110,000 cars in a plant designed for 175,000 cars, so we could easily deal with this production as well,” comments Christer Nilsson, information director at Saab.

According to Mr Nilsson, a decision to produce a European Cadillac in Trollhättan is not linked in any way to the decision on where to produce mid-sized saloons in Europe from 2008.

Proventus on the offensive

Swedish investment company Proventus acquired 8.5 per cent of the shares in Finnish media giant Alma Media on Monday for some 720 million crowns. Proventus now controls 15.2 per cent of the voting rights in Alma Media, which in turn has a holding of 23.4 per cent in TV 4, Sweden’s biggest commercial channel.

On Friday of last week Proventus acquired 15 per cent of the shares in TV 4 from MTG and in the past week the company has invested just over 1.2 billion crowns in a bid to become a player on the Nordic broadcasting market.

Bonnier, Sampo and Proventus together control 46.1 per cent of the capital and 57.2 per cent of the votes in Alma Media.

For Norwegian Schibsted, which made a bid of some 6 billion crowns for Alma Media just before Christmas, Proventus’s acquisition must come as a blow, comments DI.

Crestor possibly linked to a death

The cholesterol-lowering drug Crestor may be linked to the death of a patient, Astra Zeneca said on Monday.

Staffan Ternby, information officer at Astra Zeneca, said yesterday that there is no proven link between Crestor and the fatality but at the same time a link cannot be ruled out.

Forests damaged by storms

SCA, Holmen and Stora Enso (all net purchasers of timber) can now expect lower timber prices following the damage to Sweden’s forests as a result of the storm that drew in across the country this past weekend.

The National Board of Forestry (Skogsvårdsstyrelsen) estimates that some 50 million cubic metres of forest have been damaged in south and central Sweden.

Sources: Dagens Nyheter, Svenska Dagbladet, Dagens Industri

Supplied by BECK TRANSLATIONS.

With an experienced team of in-house translators, Beck specialises in translating from Swedish into English in such areas as finance and economics, marketing and advertising, biotechnology, the environment, quality, and personnel & administration.