Bulgarian Stock Exchange seeks regulatory nod to acquire IBEX

Interested parties have until October 17 to submit their statements regarding the acquisition, a notice published on the website of the Commission for Protection of Competition indicated.

Last month, the BSE said its shareholders had approved the proposed acquisition as well as a proposal to finance it through proceeds from the sale of government securities which the BSE owns.

In August, the BSE said it had reached an agreement with state-owned Bulgarian Energy Holding (BEH) to acquire the IBEX for 5.2 million levs ($3.1 million/2.7 million euro).

The BSE will make an initial down payment of 4 million levs, while the remaining 1.2 million levs will be paid in three equal semi-annual instalments, it said at the time.

The transfer of ownership of IBEX was requested by the European Commission in December 2015 to prevent abuse of dominant position. BEH, which pools state-owned energy assets, committed to offer certain volumes of electricity on an independently-operated day-ahead market on a newly-created power exchange and transfer ownership of the new power exchange to the Bulgarian Ministry of Finance.

Under the Commission’s decision, dated December 12, 2015, BEH was given six months from the date of formal notification of the decision to transfer the ownership of IBEX’s capital to the Ministry of Finance.

Subsequently, following BEH’s request for opinion, the European Commission said that the BSE is a more appropriate buyer of IBEX than the Ministry of Finance and the deadline for transferring ownership was extended to October 2017.

(1 euro = 1.95583 levs)