FACTBOX: Georgia's foreign investment booms
(Reuters) - Georgian leader Mikhail Saakashvili was re-elected president at the weekend with an outright victory in a presidential ballot, election officials said on Sunday.
Ex-Soviet Georgia has seen a sharp rise in foreign investment under Saakashvili, president since 2004, as his government pushed through economic reforms and sold state assets.
In 2007 Georgia received $1.5 billion in foreign direct investments, according to government estimates, compared with $1 billion in 2006.
Below are some facts about the biggest purchases of Georgian state firms by foreign companies:
* Russian mobile operator Vimpelcom bought 51 percent of Georgian cellular operator Mobitel in 2006 for $12.6 million and started operating in Georgia last year.
* Turkey, Georgia and Azerbaijan signed an agreement to jointly construct a railway branch line that will connect Georgia to Turkey. The $422 million project is expected to boost cargo transit from Central Asia and China to Europe.
* Georgian-Russian company Energy Invest acquired the Azot plant in the city of Rustavi for $20 million in 2005.
* GeoProMining, a subsidiary of Russia's Industrial Investors, owns a controlling stake in Madneuli ore enrichment plant in Georgia.
* Rupert Murdoch's News Corp holds a 49-percent stake in the Imedi television station. The rest is owned by Georgian businessman and election candidate Badri Patarkatsishvili.
* HSBC, Europe's biggest bank, plans to open a new banking division in Georgia, following other international lenders that have taken stakes in leading banks in Georgia.
* Bank of Georgia, the country's No.1 bank by assets, is now more than 80 percent owned by institutional investors -- including funds such as Firebird and East Capital.
* Bank of Georgia is the most liquid stock on the Georgian Stock Exchange and was the first Georgian firm to trade in London, where it raised $160 million in an initial public offering and issued $200 million of Eurobonds last year.
* Among other big investors in Georgia's booming banking sector are French Societe Generale, VTB, Russia's second-largest state bank, and TuranAlem, Kazakhstan's No.2 lender.
* Most power stations and distribution firms are now in the hands of private investors such as Russia's Unified Energy System and Czech company Energy Pro. Energy Pro bought electricity distribution company UDC, which supplies energy to consumers in almost all regions of the country, for $132 million.
* Owners of the Batumi oil terminal include Kazakh state oil firm KazMunaiGas and France's bank BNP Paribas.
* Hotel operators Radisson, Hyatt and Intercontinental have bought properties in Tbilisi.
* Swiss Multiplex Solutions has bought Georgia's state-owned water supply company, Tbilisi Water, which includes a hydro-electric power plant, for $85 million.
(Reporting by Niko Mchedlishvili and Margarita Antidze; editing by Andrew Dobbie)
