Bulgarian Tobacco Group Bulgartabac Appoints Two Executive Directors, Chairman

Ninova and Bilarev take over the positions from the group's former executive director Hristo Lachev and second executive director Angel Dimitrov who were dismissed b a shareholders' meeting on Tuesday, Bulgartabac said in a statement made available to SeeNews on Wednesday.

Lachev was suspended from office after a criminal investigation against him for embezzlement and tax evasion was launched in March. Dimitrov, appointed as a second executive director back in April, has resigned quoting personal reasons.

Ninova, has worked as a legal advisor with the Sofia municipality and with Bulgaria's dominant fixed-line company BTC. Prior to the appointment as executive director of the holding group, she has been its board chairman.

Bilarev, 48, worked for Bulgartabac between 1988 and 1995 taking managerial posts in the group's subsidiaries Gotse Delchev BT and Blagoevgrad BT. He was board chairman of private tobacco holding company Nikotiana BT between 1995 and 2005 when he was appointed board chairman of Sofia BT, part of Bulgartabac.

Bulgartabac, slated for privatisation, turned to a 25.4 million levs ($16.9 million/13 million euro) consolidated net loss in the first half of 2008 from a net profit of 3.513 million levs a year earlier.

The holding group, which is 80% state-owned, comprises 14 subsidiaries in Bulgaria and several idled units abroad. It sold in July two cigarette-making units - one based in the city of Plovdiv and the other one in the city of Stara Zagora. It transferred their production to its two remaining cigarette factories in the capital Sofia and in Blagoevgrad.

Bulgartabac has said it would aim to sell all four cigarette mills and its only remaining tobacco processing unit, based in the city of Pleven, by the end of this year.

The holding group, a former cigarette monopoly, is facing tough competition from international rivals, which entered the local market after Bulgaria joined the European Union at the beginning of last year.

Shares in Bulgartabac, one of the illiquid on the local capital market, last traded on November 17 closing 13.3% lower at 13 levs.

(1 euro = 1.95583 Bulgarian levs)