After all the excitement generated by the opening up of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, Cable & Wireless Plc is having to take a cold hard look at its investments there, and finds that they are wildly over-valued in its books. It is therefore making a 120m British pounds exceptional charge in its 1995-96 profit and loss account, 76m pounds of it goodwill with no impact on its cash position. Sad to say, it wipes out much of the 199m pounds gain on its sale of its stake in Mannesmann Mobilfunk GmbH. Its interests in the region include its 32% stake in the Toronto-quoted Petersburg Long Distance Inc, where a write-down of the order of some $40m is implied by the share price. It also has a 50% stake in Belarussian national cellular group Belcel, 63% of Latvian national operator Lattelekom and 49% of Bulgarian cellular operator RTC.
