November 23 (SeeNews) - Bulgaria’s bourse is not pushing the state to sell its 44% stake in the market, Bulgarian Stock Exchange (BSE) chairman Victor Papazov said on Friday.
“We are feeling quite comfortable with the state as an owner,” Papazov told SeeNews on the sidelines of a roundtable held in the central Bulgarian city of Stara Zagora.
In the past, the sale of the state-owned stake was seen as a means to attract a strategic partner who would help the BSE's integration into European capital markets, Papazov added.
However, the Bulgarian government decided to hold on to its stake and the BSE decided to adopt Deutsche Boerse’s XETRA trading platform.
Nordic exchange OMX and Deutsche Boerse have previously expressed interest in establishing strategic partnerships with the Sofia bourse, alongside Borsa Italiana and the stock exchanges in Vienna, Athens and Prague.