In accordance with ASE Regulation and the decision 5/204/14.11.2000 of the Hellenic Capital Market Commission, it is announced by ELBISCO HOLDING S.A. that on 31.1.2006 a syndicated loan agreement was signed amounting to Euro 10 million. The said loan has a 5-year duration and was signed with ALPHA ΒΑΝΚ. The above loan aims at the pay-off and refinancing part of the Company's convertible bond of total amount Euro 23,6 million that expired on the 6th of February 2006, while the remaining amount of the bond including interest, of Euro 15 million was covered by the major shareholders against a future increase on the Company's share capital. In this framework, the Company is expected in the following period to call for an Extraordinary General Meeting of the Company's Shareholders with main issues on the agenda, a decision on the clauses of the share capital increase, as well as, the merger of ELBISCO INDUSTRIAL AND COMMERCIAL S.A. with ELBISCO HOLDING S.A. The above strategic decision, which constitutes the second successive merger, aims at simplifying the structure of ELBISCO Group, and targets via a financial restructuring at improving the cash liabilities of the Group's listed Company. The above operational developments in addition to the highly impressive strengthening of the bread segment that is already observed from the second-half of 2005, mainly due to new launches of value-added products as well as products with high nutritional value, outline, already from the beginning of the year, promising developments on the Group's results for 2006. ELBISCO's of strategy for the next two years is focused on the following three-axis approach: achievement of organic sales growth via strengthening of its commercial brand-names in the Greek market, boosting of its exports, and improvement of the Group's profitability via further cost savings on total Group operating expenses, and additional scale economies from the already scheduled or materialized mergers of its subsidiary companies in the local market.