Bil dividends, Bil on Facebook, half for Macron

Precision Capital’s stake in Banque internationale à Luxembourg have earned Precision €193m in dividends, according to Paperjam calculations. Precision is the Luxembourg-based investment vehicle for the Qatari royal family, and bought 89.9% of Bil shares for €656m in 2012. Precision also bought 99.9% of KBL European private bank for more than €1bn the same year. Its KBL investment garnered €143m between 2013 and 2015. The private bank reports 2016 earnings on Wednesday. Precision is holding preliminary talks with potential buyers its stake in Bil for around $1.5bn, Bloomberg News reported last week. Neither organisation has commented.
Bil is the third most influential employer in Luxembourg on Facebook. The City of Luxembourg is second and Cargolux tops the charts in the “Leader Index” produced by the social media consultancy Clement & Weyer for Paperjam. The index is calculated using the number of likes and the page’s engagement ratio.
More than 200 startups, from 25 countries, have participated Luxinnovation’s Fit4Start initiative. The support programme, launched last year, includes 16 weeks of intensive business coaching and €50,000 in seed funding. The figures were revealed in Luxinnovation’s annual report, issued on Tuesday. Last year the state-backed business promotion body was newly tapped to lead communications around Luxembourg’s new national identity, conduct a market intelligence study, and prospect potential investors. The agency’s budget will increase from €6.92m in 2016 to €7.9m in 2017, and it will hire 12 more staff members by the end of 2018.
Twenty endoscopes were stolen in April from the Centre Hospitalier de Luxembourg, the country’s largest hospital. The equipment, used by surgeons to see inside patients’ bodies, was worth €800,000.
Just over half of French cross-border commuters in Luxembourg plan to vote for the centrist pro-EU candidate in France’s presidential election, according to a recent poll. As of Tuesday at 6pm, out of 400 respondents, 54% said they would vote for Emmanuel Macron of En Marche and 21% for Marine Le Pen of the populist Front National. 9% said they would cast a blank ballot, 8% were unsure and 6% said they would abstain. The survey was run by the French-language news and information site Les Frontaliers. The second and final round of the election takes place on Sunday.