Shipyard owner still a mystery

Certain dailies originally published information that Qatar Investment Authority, the Gulf state's largest investment fund, had purchased the shipyards. Not long after, this changed to QInvest, Qatar's biggest investment bank.

But a day later Rzeczpospolita announced that QInvest had sent a statement to the effect that it was not the investor, but was instead an "advisor" to the purchase. "We are acting as an advisor to the clients which are in the process of purchasing the assets," the statement read.

"Unfortunately, we can't reveal who our clients are. The transaction is currently in the due diligence phase," it said. The deals for the Gdynia and Szczecin properties are worth zł.288 million and zł.160 million, respectively.

According to Treasury spokesperson Maciej Wewiór, confusion in this matter is partly due to over-eager journalists' misunderstanding of the situation. He was reluctant to discuss QInvest's statement, saying "I can't really comment on mail between a journalist and a company."

However, he affirmed that the state regards special purpose vehicle Stichting Particulier Fonds Greenrights as its partner in the deal. "The buyer is Greenrights, but the funding is, in a transaction of this scale, of course provided by some financial institutions. And that's QInvest and Qatar Islamic Bank," he said.

The precise ownership structure of Greenrights was as yet unclear as WBJ went to press.

E Blake Berry