SOFIA (Bulgaria), August 29 (SeeNews) – Bulgaria's financial regulator said on Wednesday it has approved an offer by Belgian banking and insurance group KBC to buy out minority shareholders in Bulgarian insurer DZI.
KBC, which owns 81.21% of the Bulgarian insurance company, will offer 188.37 levs ($130.9/96.47 euro) for each of the 725,282 shares in DZI it does not own yet. DZI, one of the 10 biggest public companies in Bulgaria in terms of market capitalisation, reported a net profit of 1.39 million levs for the first half of 2007, down 46.5% on the year.
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Shares in the company closed unchanged at 188.37 levs in volume of some 80 shares on the Bulgarian Stock Exchange on Wednesday.
The KBC Group was set up in 2005 through the merger of KBC Bank & Insurance Holding Company and its parent company Almanij. It serves some 11 million customers and employs around 50,000 people. In southeastern Europe it is also present in Romania, Serbia and Slovenia.
(1 euro = 1.95583 Bulgarian levs)