OREANDA-NEWS. October 06, 2010. Statoil Fuel & Retail, the parent company of Eesti Statoil, will set up the group's financial center in Tallinn in October.

The unit that is to function as a center of excellence will provide to companies of the group services like financial asset management, liquidity management, centralized financial asset accounting, and financing.

"In the choice of a suitable location for the group's financial center, several important factors such as advanced financial and IT infrastructures and favorable enterprise and taxation environments spoke for Estonia. The decision was also significantly affected by the adoption of euro in Estonia on January 1, 2011," Statoil Fuel & Retail CFO Klaus-Anders Nysteen said.

In connection with the establishment of the financial center Statoil Fuel & Retail made an additional investment of 270 million euros in its Estonian subsidiary Eesti Statoil that will be used to finance the group's companies in all the eight countries in which it has operations at present. Formation of the financial structural unit will continue in coming months as a result of which a subunit coordinating financial services provided to the whole group will be set up at Eesti Statoil.

Kai Realo from the Estonian subsidiary of the group explained to BNS that Statoil Fuel & Retail is increasing the stock capital of Eesti Statoil by 270 million euros, raising it to 280.8 million euros.

The additional investment covers all the expenses related to forming the team of the financial center, Realo said. In her words, Statoil will gradually hire 5-6 finance specialists during the first year.

Statoil Fuel & Retail, the Norway-based oil and gas group, has an extensive retail trade network consisting of around 2,300 service stations and unmanned filling stations in Scandinavia, Poland, the Baltic states and Russia.