KIEV, Feb. 21 – Sokrat Financial Company, Ukraine's largest securities trader, has received a general license of the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) for currency transactions, Interfax-Ukraine reported Wednesday.

KIEV, Feb. 21 – The net profit of UkrTransNafta, the state-owned oil shipper, rose 39% on the year to 227.1 million hryvnias in 2007, the State Commission for Securities and the Stock Market reported.

KIEV, Feb. 20 – Ukraine announced an auction to sell a 99.52% stake in Odessa Portside Plant, a major producer and shipper of ammonia, setting an initial price of UAH 3 billion, according to the State Property Fund.

KIEV, Feb. 21 ??“ Sumy Frunze engineering group, one of the leading world's producers of equipment for the gas, oil and chemical industries, launched the Goturdepe gas compressor station, which was built for Turkmenneft Concern.

MOSCOW, Feb. 20 ??“ The Soyuz-Victan group of companies plans to purchase cognac production facilities in France.

KIEV, Feb. 20 ??“ VAB Bank, Ukraine??™s No. 18 bank by assets, is to attract about $270 million on the international markets, including through issuing Eurobonds, board chairman of VAB Group Petro Baron said.

KIEV, Feb. 20 ??“ Ukraine's grain harvest may increase to about 38 million metric tons in 2007, up from about 34.3 million metric tons in 2006, an Agriculture Ministry official reported.

"Today we have all the grounds to say that 38 million tons [for the grain harvest in 2007] is a realistic figure," the director of department for agriculture market development, Anatoliy Rogozin, said on Tuesday.

KIEV, Feb. 21 - AVentures Group Holding, a fast growing Ukrainian electronics retailer, plans to spend up to $35 million in 2007 to double the number of retail centers, a company official said.

KIEV, Feb. 21 ??“ Representatives of national nuclear energy generation company EnergoAtom and the European Commission on Feb. 16 and Feb. 17 discussed the realizations of projects at the Yuzhnoukrainsk NPP as a part of the EU's Tacis program, EnergoAtom said.

MOSCOW, Feb. 21 ??“ The launch of the American XM -3 commercial digital radio broadcast satellite from a sea platform in the Pacific Ocean with the help of a Zenit-3SL rocket carrier has been postponed again, a source in the Russian tracking headquarters told Interfax on Monday.