Bulgaria's Central Cooperative Bank Gets Regulatory Nod to Buy Macedonia's Sileks Banka for 878.6 Mln Denars (14.2 Mln Euro)

“The Macedonian securities commission has decided to allow CCB to buy 100% or 183,388 of the ordinary shares of Sileks Banka for 4,791 denars per share,” the commission said in a statement posted on its website.

Officials of neither CCB nor Sileks Banka were immediately available to comment.

CCB has got the green light for the deal from Macedonia's central bank NBRM in last month.

In October, CCB also bought a 66.67% stake in Macedonian commercial bank Postenska Banka for an undisclosed sum.

Sileks Banka (www.sileksbanka.com.mk), located in the capital Skopje, is part of the Sileks holding structure, which includes mining, tourism, construction, farming and trading companies.

Macedonia's central bank ranks Sileks Banka seventh among the nation's eight "small banks," with assets below 4.5 billion denars ($106.3/72.9 million euro) each. There are 19 banks in Macedonia, three of which are considered big with assets exceeding 15 billion denars.

Postenska Banka (www.postbank.com.mk) also is in the list of small banks in Macedonia but it has the best developed outlet network of all 19 commercial banks in the ex-Yugoslav state of two million people.

CCB, part of industrial conglomerate Chimimport, ranked 10th in terms of assets among Bulgaria's banks at the end of November. Bulgaria has 24 locally-registered banks and branches of four foreign banks.

CCB is part of the blue-chip SOFIX index of the Bulgarian Stock Exchange. Its shares ended down 5.4% to 7.65 levs ($5.7/3.91 euro) in volume of 25,203 traded shares on Wednesday.

(1 euro = 61.7209 Macedonian denars)