The owners of glass & costume jewellery maker Jablonex Group will hold talks on the sale of 98.1% of the company to a group of Slovak investors who have made the best offer, said Petr Smutny from PricewaterhouseCoopers, which is organising the sale. Jablonex declined to reveal more information about the investors. The talks on the sale should end mid-January, Mr. Smutny said. Jablonex Group is one of the largest costume jewellery makers in the world. But early Aug/08, shareholders decided to offer the firm for sale because they had different opinions on how to manage the company in a struggle against the strong Czech crown & Asian competition. A total of 20 investors were interested in the shares of the glass group with around 1,900 staff & a turnover of about CZK 2BN. Four were then shortlisted for the final round, from which the winner was selected. "Although it is an investment group, they have experts from the segment and want to develop glass and costume jewellery production in Jablonex further", said Mr. Smutny. Conditions of the sale will now be discussed and further talks on the price are also possible, he said. "The sale is also yet to be approved by the anti-trust office", he added. Jablonex Group was established in autumn 2005 through the merger of five large glass and costume jewellery companies (Ornela, Jablonex, Bizuterie Ceske Mincovny, Zeleznobrodske sklo and Bohemian Jewelery) based in the Jablonec nad Nisou district in northern Bohemia. The group employed 3,500 people then. The company will reduce staff numbers to 1,800 by end-2008 owing to a restructuring which seeks to gradually concentrate production into a smaller number of plants to reduce costs and secure the company's ability to compete on world markets. Jablonex exports almost 80% of output.
