1923 Investments, a company of Malta-based Hili Ventures, expects to finalise the acquisition by early Q2 2020. The business will trade under a new name which will be announced after the completion of the deal.

“This acquisition is in keeping with our strategy to grow in areas in which we are already active and to broaden our horizons,” 1923 Investments Chief Executive Officer Melo Hili said.

“Our anchor company Carmelo Caruana has been running a ship-to-ship operation in the Mediterranean for many years. This additional business presents an important opportunity for us to venture further into this field and significantly bolster our revenues and profitability,” he added.

1923 Investments’ commercial activities are located in Malta, Poland and Hungary. 1923 Investments is the investment arm of Hili Ventures.

Hili Ventures is engaged in partnerships with McDonald’s and Apple, logistics, marine and engineering, technology, property, hospitality and leasing in ten countries across the Mediterranean and the Middle East to Central and Eastern Europe. It has a staff of more than 9,400.

Hili Ventures partners include Cisco, CMA CGM, Diebold Nixdorf, Gemalto, GLS, Hoffmann, IBM, Konecranes, Lenovo, Microsoft, NCR, Tranter, Terberg, as well as other global brands.

The post Hili’s 1923 Investments agrees to buy part of Teekay Tankers first appeared on The Malta Business Weekly.

Christian Borg, Director of Princess Holdings Ltd, and Tommaso Dragotto, President of Sicily by Car, announced the partnership at Montekristo Estates, recently.

“This new partnership will help synergise and take to the next level our offering in car rental by combining the expertise and experience both companies are renowned for, resulting in peace of mind and reassurance to our regular and leasing clients that our service will continue to be the best in the market,” said Mr Borg.

“Both companies share the same passion for providing customers with great value and easy, hassle-free experience. By combining our existing fleet and international airport rental locations with Princess Holdings’ local network, market knowledge and business heritage, we’re pleased we’ll be able to offer customers across the archipelago a growing array of choices and services,” said Mr Dragotto.

Founded in 1963, Sicily by Car S.p.A. has a network of more than 60 offices across Italy as well as being present in major Italian airports. Its fleet counts more than 20,000 vehicles.

The post Sicily by Car launches services in Malta first appeared on The Malta Business Weekly.

By combining their infrastructure, Melita and Telia expect to support Maltese businesses in shifting critical processes to the cloud through direct and secure connections that bypass the public internet. They promise to provide a “consistent and agile cloud-to-premises network experience”, the press statement says.

“We are fully focused on understanding the needs of all our clients and providing the best solutions for their needs. This service complements the major investments in the Melita Data Centre, increased dedicated fibre presence in leading business centres, and upgrades to Melita’s international network,” director of Business Services at Melita Malcolm Briffa said. “Melita has partnered with Telia Carrier, the world’s number one global Internet backbone, according to the Oracle-Dyn rankings, to provide business customers with best-in-class cloud connectivity,” he added.

“In partnering with Melita, we’re bringing enhanced global connectivity and our award-winning customer care to businesses based in Malta, providing the performance and service that business customers expect. We’re really looking forward to continuing our fruitful relationship with our customers in Malta,” Henrik Almroth, Sales Director, Telia Carrier, said.

Telia Career offers more than 65,000 kilometres of fibre assets across 280 Points of Presence (PoPs) in more than 115 cities and 35 countries around the world, according to the press release.

The post Melita partners with Telia for offering cloud services first appeared on The Malta Business Weekly.

Real estate activities saw a massive 50.5% turnover hike during the last quarter of 2018, as compared to the same quarter year earlier.

Motor trade activities were up by 7.1%, transportation and storage activities grew by 4.2%, accommodation and food service activities rose by 3.4%, retail trade was up by 3.0%, administrative and support service activities increased by 3.0% and wholesale trade saw a rise of 2.1%, according to figures put out by the NSO.

Turnover in scientific and technical activities dropped by 10.1% information and communication activities were down by 6.6% in Q4 2018, as compared to the base period.

The full report including charts and visual representation of data is available for download at the website of NSO.

The post Short-term services turnover grows in Q4 2018 first appeared on The Malta Business Weekly.

“BOV Internet Banking users can avail themselves of this service in the normal manner except for those few instances where customers would want to process payments to non-SEPA countries on the same day with that same day’s value date. This will be reinstated shortly,” the press statement says.

The bank says its operations are now “close to normal” and the bank is concentrating its efforts on processing the last few backlogs that had resulted from this incident.

The bank announced on Friday to restore 3rd party payments by the beginning of the week.

On 13 February, BOV shut down services after they learnt that the bank’s systems had been compromised in a cyberattack that falsified transfers valued at €13m. The bank restored some services on 14 February morning.

By 18 February BOV restored SEPA payment services. At the same time, news reports suggested the sources of the attack were unknown, and it was difficult to say when the funds would be restored, and whether they could be restored in their entirety.

The incident is currently the subject of a Criminal Inquiry before the Court of Magistrates of Malta, the BOV statement says.

The post BOV restores 3rd party payments first appeared on The Malta Business Weekly.