August 15 (SeeNews) - The Bulgarian Stock Exchange (BSE) said it has reached an agreement with state-owned Bulgarian Energy Holding (BEH) company to acquire the Independent Bulgarian Energy Exchange (IBEX) for 5.2 million levs ($3.1 million/2.7 million euro).
The deal will be concluded after it receives the approval of BSE’s shareholders, the stock exchange said in a statement on Monday.
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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.
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 an 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)