CEZ Group

In the first year of a fully open market, CEZ increased its profits by almost 300 million CZK

Today´s extraordinary general meeting of the newly elected CEZ Supervisory Board, appointed Stanislav Kazecky as the new chairman of the supervisory board.

The meeting of CEZ Supervisory Board, held this morning, appointed a new member of the CEZ Board of Directors, David Svojitka, the CEZ Executive Director for Finances and Administration.

Petr Voboril was appointed the vice-chairman of the CEZ Executive Board, by a meeting of the Board held today.

CEZ Board of Directors, at its meeting held on October 20. 12. 2002, decided to appeal against the verdict of the Czech Authority for Protecting Economic Competition (APEC), concerning the merger of CEZ and distribution companies, and substantiate this by an analysis of the issue.

CEZ Power Company and the OKD mining company signed a contract covering the supply of electricity for the next year. OKD thus became the largest end customer of CEZ that will be supplied within the Rainbow Electricity scheme, supposing we do not count the distribution companies.

Today, CEZ Power Company received a favourable verdict from the Authority for Protecting Economic Competition, concerning the planned merger between CEZ and the distribution companies, which had already been approved by the Czech government.

As the day when the Economic Competition Protection Authority will pronounce its verdict on the planned interconnection between CEZ and the distribution companies is drawing closer, the competitors exert considerable pressure against this merger. CEZ is by no means surprised by this scenario. It is obvious that the interests of our competitors from abroad are not identical with the interests of the Czech government.

The gross profit of the company increased by 2 per cent and reached the amount of 7.7 billion CZK, but its net profit dropped by 16%, to 5.4 billion CZK, which was due to the higher income tax deposits the company had been paying.