October 24 (SeeNews) - Bulgaria's Victoria Commercial Bank, a wholly-owned subsidiary of bankrupt Corpbank, said it invited Bulgarian American Credit Bank (BACB) and D Commerce Bank to submit non-binding offers for its purchase.
After the expiry of the term for submission of letters of interest and the assessment of the profiles of the candidates, and following additional consultations with Bulgaria's central bank, BACB and D Commerce Bank were invited to the next stage of the sale procedure, Victoria Bank said in a statement on Friday.
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By the mid-September deadline, eight potential buyers expressed interest in the purchase of 100% of the bank, including BACB and D Bank, two tie-ups (one comprising local insurance company Lev Ins and Germany's Kerbler Holding, the other consisting of UK-based Hanson Asset Management and Bulgarian brokerage Euro-Finance), Bulgaria's Investbank, Egyptian engineering group Zaghloul Holding, Transact Europe and Bulgarian telecommunications group BTC.
The ongoing sale process consists of three stages - submitting expressions of interest, submission of non-binding offers and applications containing final offers.
Corporate Commercial Bank (Corpbank or CCB) was hit by a run on deposits in June 2014, just a few days after it finalised the purchase of Credit Agricole's local unit, later renamed to Victoria Commercial Bank. Corpbank was declared insolvent in April 2015.
As of end-2015, Victoria owed 117 million levs ($67 million/59.8 million euro) to its parent Corpbank. Victoria recorded a net loss of 9.3 million levs for 2015, compared to a loss of 15.8 million levs a year earlier. Its total assets stood at 169.2 million levs at end-2015, including 111.6 million levs in gross loans to clients and 8.1 million levs in customer deposits.
(1 euro = 1.95583 levs)
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