Hi everybody. This is my first post on the forum, looking forward to some good conversation ! :)

I'm interested in finding out where's the best place to go online to get economic news and market reports from Serbia ? Preferrably in English as my Serbian is of an intermediate standard at best. However, if the best options are in Serbian then I would like to know about those too.

Thanks !

For the beginning you can start by searching this page: http://www.wire.seenews.com/. It contains a lot of good news from Serbian stock market, even for us, native Serbians.
And: http://www.belex.rs/eng/trgovanje/dnevni/vbt/akcije

Is there a good news-reporting site which shares it's information for free? :D

I've managed to find a couple of decent free ones myself.

http://www.emportal.rs/en/
http://www.seebiz.eu/sr/

The second site is better in Serbian, but still has plenty of good news and reporting in English language.

http://seenews.com/

same as the one posted previously but here, the news are free :)

Here at East Capital, we usually refer to southeastern Europe as the last serious convergence case. This region includes the western Balkans, but also existing EU members Romania and Bulgaria, and EU candidate, Turkey. When we say “convergence case,” we mean countries that stand to gain economically from the process of entering EU, due to the reforms and investments this will bring. And we can add to that the fact that the initial years of membership usually provide a strong financial impetus. History has given us several examples of this, primarily Spain, Ireland and the Eastern European countries that joined in 2004.

We remain hopeful however, for a positive development for this region. And the best exposure to this region is to be found in our Balkan fund and our special product, Bering Balkan. Another reason for investments with a long-term perspective in these funds is the fact that these markets have not recovered from the crisis in line with the rest of the world (see the table below, showing stock market developments), and that they also have low valuations.

Turkey Slovenia Austria Croatia Greece Serbia Romania Bulgaria
YTD 91% 10% 41% 15% 24% 13% 60% 18%
From 2009 Low 123% 19% 75% 57% 51% 81% 146% 63%
From Peak -12% -67% -50% -63% -62% -81% -57% -78%

The first month of the year was a rather interesting one in Eastern Europe as the Baltic markets saw very strong renewed interest on the back of better than expected economic performance and an increased conviction that Estonia will get the green light for Euro adoption during the spring.

The Estonian market gained an incredible 40.4% in January. The performance in neighbouring Latvia and Lithuania was more modest but nevertheless impressive,13.7% and 16.9% respectively, making the Baltics some of the best markets in the world in January. Two other nonindex markets, Ukraine and Croatia, also had a good start of the year gaining 10.5% and 8% respectively. The large Turkish and Russian markets continued with positive performance gaining 7% and 3.3% respectively since the end of last year. A number of Central and Southeastern European markets underperformed and dropped a few percent.
East Capital

The Serbian market also managed to show a mild gain of 0.4%. Other markets were affected by an increased risk aversion given the turbulence in Greece and within the Euro Zone in general. Although most Eastern European countries have a much more solid debt situation, these markets also fell, along with most exchanges worldwide, due to the negative market sentiment. Estonia and the other Baltic markets were hit the hardest, which is also a reaction to the very strong performance in January.

The Turkish market fell signifi cantly, partly due to the increased political turbulence. Other large markets, such as the Russian and Polish, developed in line with the region with a decline of 5.7% and 5.2% respectively.

East Capital

BELGRADE - The government will discuss on Thursday selling 40 percent of Telekom Srbija's shares by way of an international tender.

The tender will occur in two phases, and the government is expected to announce it either in June or September, according to Belgrade daily Politika, which adds that the sale will be similar to mobile operator Mobtel's sale to Norway’s Telenor.

The starting price for the auction will be the highest one offered by interested investors in the pre-qualification tender.

According to the daily’s sources, the starting price will not be under EUR 1bn, and could reach EUR 1.5bn.

PM Mirko Cvetković's circles are saying that the money gained the sale of Telekom will be set aside for a special fund for financing infrastructure projects.

According to the current ownership structure, Greek OTE owns 20 percent of the company and the state of Serbia owns 80 percent.

Asked why 40 percent is being sold, Politika’s source from the government said that this amount was given to avoid accusations of favoritism when it comes to one possible buyer, Deutsche Telekom – that owns a portion of OTE – and to give other interested buyers the chance to become majority owners.

Whoever acquires the 40 percent in the tender will be able to increase this share to majority by buying odd shares from Telekom employees and citizens.

Economy Minister Mlađan Dinkić denied that Deutsche Telekom has a right of first purchase, since it co-owns OTE.

There are three large companies that have unofficially shown interest, according to sources, and they include telecommunications companies from Egypt and Turkey.

Telekom Serbia was founded in June 1997 as a shareholders company. The same year, 49 percent of the company was sold, 29 percent to Italian STET and 20 percent to OTE.

The Italian company sold its shares back to the state in December 2002, giving it 80 percent ownership.

The state has the “golden share” in the company, giving it the right to veto all important strategic decisions in the board of directors.

Telekom Serbia also owns Telekom Srpska, in the Republic of Srpska (RS), Bosnia, and Montenegrin M:tel.

Latest report by one of the brokers
http://www.hypo-securities.rs/about/reports/2010-04-19-2010-04-23.pdf