Bulgarian Stock Exchange to sell govt securities to finance IBEX acquisition

The BSE shareholders will vote on the proposal at an extraordinary meeting scheduled for September 26, BSE said in a statement.

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

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 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)