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The favourite destination for Chinese shoppers in Europe is usually Paris, but the private investment group CEFC has been on a veritable spending spree in Prague and the Czech Republic. In the basket have gone stakes in a major brewery, travel company, Czech investment group, famous football club, and a few choice pieces of real estate in Prague.

Czech energy group ČEZ has an interesting publicity stunt in which it gives a statistic for the week. It’s usually some self-promotional stuff about the number of electricity pylons it has, donations to charity, or power plant output. This week’s statistic that sticks in the mind though came from outside: the 100,000 crowns a month that has been paid to a top ANO politician for not very specific advisory services.

One of China biggest private corporations, CEFC China Energy, has underlined its Czech ambitions with two major real estate deals and the planned acquisition of almost a third of the aggressive Czech investment group J&T.

Czech development company TelPro has come up with a new cloud software application that helps uncover counterfeit goods. The so-called Authentizer application for mobile phones is already being used by several producers of alcoholic drinks.

Tourists in Prague in the summer generally aren’t afraid to splurge during their holiday but a study by Prague City Tourism suggests that visitors this summer were a little thriftier than the last winter season. Aside from transportation and accommodation, tourists spent the most at restaurants, but a touch less than in the past.

Czech construction company PSG reportedly has revoked its contract to build a gas-fired power plant in sub-Arctic Siberia with the state-controlled Czech export bank and insurer looking at what could be a major hit from the project.

The Czech Republic has the fastest growing economy in Europe, according to revised growth estimates from the Czech Statistical office released on Friday. The revised figures have confirmed the 4.4 percent growth in the second quarter of the year compared with the same period last year.

The Czech government and owners New World Resources are likely to have to renegotiate state support aimed at extending the life of the Paskov mine, one of the biggest employers in the Moravian Silesian Region, the minister of industry and trade, Jan Mládek, told cabinet colleagues on Wednesday.

Czech privately held company Energetický a Průmyslový Holding (EPH) has become the favourite to become the biggest player in Slovakia’s electricity market after Italian energy giant ENEL said it had been selected for exclusive talks over the purchase of its majority stake in Slovenské Elektrárne. The talks could result within weeks in a deal to buy up the shares.

The planned giant investment of Taiwanese mobile, tablet and camera manufacturer HTC in Brno promising to create up to a thousand new jobs is falling apart within months of it being announced. Dozens of the company’s employees have received notices to quit before the planned European service centre was even launched, Czech Television reported on Monday.