December 21 (SeeNews) - The Financial Supervision Commission (FSC) said that it has approved the establishment of a multilateral trading facility (MTF) that would serve as a growth market for small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs).
The Financial Supervision Commission provided no further details in its statement, published on Thursday.
In October, the regulator said that it has extended the deadline for the Bulgarian Stock Exchange to provide additional information regarding its intention to set up the SME growth market. The FSC asked the bourse to correct its documents on two previous occasions - in July and in August.
MTFs are self-regulated financial trading venues which serve as an alternative to traditional regulated markets on stock exchanges.
In February, Bulgaria's parliament approved changes to the Markets in Financial Instruments Act, which include the opportunity to establish a so-called growth market. According to the act, a growth market is an MTF on which at least 50% of listed issuers are SMEs.
In October, the Ministry of Economy and the Sofia bourse launched an EU-funded voucher scheme to support micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) which want to carry out an initial public offering on the Sofia bourse.
The scheme envisages granting vouchers of 50,000 levs ($29,000/26,000 euro) each to 30 MSMEs, to cover part of their costs related to completing an IPO on the BSE, while companies commit to issuing at least 500,000 levs worth of new shares within nine months of the voucher’s issuance.
Last week, Bulgarian security solutions developer Biodit Global Technology said that it intends to seek financing under the voucher scheme, in order to finance the cost of its planned initial public offering on the BSE.
In August, Biodit Global Technology told SeeNews that it intends to offer a 'significant portion' of its shares in the IPO. The company also said it is preparing the IPO prospectus which it plans to submit to the Bulgarian financial regulator 'very soon'.
(1 euro = 1.95583 levs)