October 8 (SeeNews) - Bulgaria's anti-trust regulator on Monday gave the green light to Cetelem, the consumer credit unit of France’s BNP Paribas, to take over the leader in the Bulgarian consumer credit market JetFinance International for an undisclosed sum.
Through the acquisition Cetelem, which offers consumer credits in 27 countries and has not been present on the Bulgarian market so far, aims to strengthen its position in the region, the Commission for Protection of Competition (CPC) said in a statement.
You can subscribe to our M&A newsletter here
The emerging markets accounts for 15% of Cetelem’s net banking income, company chairman and managing director Francois Villeroy de Galhau has said.
The market share of JetFinance International is minimal and it is not expected to change as a result of the deal, the CPC said.
Before the deal, JetFinance International was majotiry owned by U.S. AIG Investments through the AIG -New Europe Fund, a fund sponsored by AIG Capital Partners, Inc.
JetFinance ( www.jetfinanceintl.com ) raised its net profit by 72.5% to nearly 10 million levs ($7.2 million/5.1 million euro) last year. Its CEO Elvin Guri has said the company targets a net profit of 15 million to 17 million levs for this year.
Cetelem ( www.cetelem.com ) says it is the market leader in France and in continental Europe, with over 58 billion euro ($81.7 billion) of outstanding loans and 23,000 employees at end of June 2007.
(1 euro = 1.95583 Bulgarian levs)