Bulgaria Hopes to Sell 50.5% in Bourse in H1 2012

The building of the Bulgarian Stock Exchange in Sofia. Photo by Sophia Photo Agency

Bulgaria hopes to find an investor for its only stock exchange in the first half of next year, the bourse's chief executive has said though declining to reveal the names of potential bidders.

"[The] majority of our stock exchange is state-owned. Our finance minister strongly believes that the government shouldn't be a shareholder for a very long period. This means that they've decided to part with that stake in the near future to a strategic investor," the exchange's chief executive, Ivan Takev, told Dow Jones Newswires on Tuesday on the sidelines of a Marketforce- and IEA-sponsored European exchange summit in London.

"We've had some meetings with potential bidders. There is definitely interest in buying that 50.5% stake... Selling in the first half of next year is achievable," Takev said.

The statement comes shortly after insiders told local media that the government's hopes to sell the majority stake in the bourse by the end of the year have gone sour as no bidders have declared interest so far.

Shortly after the Bulgarian Stock Exchange launched the sale of its shares in January, Finance Minister Simeon Djankov announced that there is a "huge" interest among investors. CEE Stock Exchange Group however was the only one to openly declare its interest.

Bulgaria's only stock exchange became a public company in the middle of December last year after the Financial Supervision Commission approved its prospectus and the bourse was listed on its own platform. The capital of the bourse is a total of BGN 6 582 860 at BGN 1 apiece.

Bulgaria's Finance Ministry raised at the beginning of October its share to 50% plus one share from 44% in the country's stock exchange. The government bought 715,000 shares at BN 1 apiece. The bourse will sell the remaining 50% held by private investors including brokerages and banks.

The shareholders said the move aims to ease the future privatisation of the exchange and the search for a strategic investor.

Since 2008, the stock exchange has traded on the Deutsche Boerse's Xetra platform under a contract that expires in 2012. Bulgaria has discussed ways to sell its bourse stake over the past decade with Sweden's OMX AG and exchanges in Austria, Greece and Poland to boost interest in local stocks and make trading more transparent.

Sofia Stock Exchange has been the top performer in South East Europe since the beginning of the year, according to a Financial Times ranking.

The region's top performer is Bulgaria with a rise of 29% in USD terms and 22% in local currency. According to FT data, that's the world's best in USD terms and second only to Zambia in local currency.