Holding company MM Grupp, owned by businessman Margus Linnamäe, has reported yearly profits of over â¬300 million, the bulk of which has come from the progress of selling a major pan-Baltic advertising company. The group made losses on its pharmaceutical businesses, it says, the result of last year s pharmacy reforms.
The MM Grupp says total profits stood at â¬302 million across all sales.
The bulk of this derived from the sale of Baltic Classifieds Group, a company that had consolidated the Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian advertising business in July 2019, to the Apax Partners fund, for an undisclosed sum.
Excluding financial transactions and the sale of subsidiaries, MM Group earned a profit of â¬3.8 million, the company says, and sales revenue of â¬711 million.
Eesti Ekspress appealed the MM Grupp s call for damages and a printed refutation of an article which appeared in April last year which said that the company was to be broken up, after failing to file an annual financial report.
Harju County Court rejected Eesti Ekspress case, ruling on Tuesday that the publication should issue a public refutation of the article, on the grounds that delays in submitting accounts do not lead to compulsory dissolution of a company, or run the risk of that happening.
This meant that the article and its headline in particular were libelous, the court found.
ERR News looks back at 2020 which was, if nothing else, an eventful year.
As no one needs reminding, 2020 was dominated by the coronavirus pandemic and its knock-on effects on everyday life and the economy, several EKRE-led scandals and the upcoming marriage referendum.
But other, more positive events also occurred, such as Estonia taking up its first non-permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council.
The ERR News team has looked back over the top stories of 2020.
January
The year started with Estonia formally commencing its two-year stint as a non-permanent member on the UN Security Council (UNSC).
Estonia had been awarded the post in June the previous year, and joined Niger, Tunisia, Vietnam and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines as non-permanent members for 2020-2021.