Bulgaria’s competition authority CPC gave on Thursday the go-ahead to the merger of Eurocom Cable and CableTEL, the nation's two biggest cable operators.

The buyer, Netherlands-registered company FN Cable Cooperatif, which controls Eurocom Cable’s owner, FN Cable Holdings B.V., also acquires connected company Vicom Bulgaria.

The deal created the biggest player in the paid TV, Internet and telephony segment although Eurocom board chairman Petyo Staikov said the new firm will hold no more than a quarter of paid TV.

Staikov declined to announce financial details or total subscriber numbers.

“At this points I cannot say whether after the transaction there will be one company with one name and single management. The CPC’s decision should be implemented by a certain deadline but it does not actually perform the integration between the companies,” Staikov explained adding that tying up the businesses would be a complicated process and may span six months to two years.

The CPC threw its support behind the concentration although the new paid TV provider will have a dominant market position, and reiterated that it is not the market monopoly itself but the abuse of such a dominant position that goes against domestic legislation.

The watchdog said the deal would give a boost to the Internet and fixed-line telephony markets.

However, the transaction caused quite a stir on all three markets it will affect. Small cable operators association TV Club 2000 told the regulator the new company will control over 80% of the paid TV market.

Bulgaria’s dominant landline operator BTC sounded the alarm that the deal will result in an over 35% market dominance and reshuffle the fixed-line telephony market.

(Dnevnik)

The Cabinet did not dare approve the insurance health assurance model and shifted the task to the MPs.

The 2008-2013 national health strategy adopted Thursday offers competitive starting funding by preserving the current obligatory contributions and opening the door for private funds but does not say a word about health insurance, disregarding the consensus the coalition partners say they have reached on the new health model.

Minister Evgenii Zhelev expressed confidence the legislation needed to strip the National Health Insurance Fund from its stranglehold on the market will be passed by the end of the year so that the fund can compete with the private players as of 2010.

The latest version of the health strategy is hardly a far cry from previous proposals and is just as roundabout. It envisages gradual higher health contribution and an increase of the share of public health funding as percentage of the GDP at several stages but specifies neither amounts nor timelines. The information is also absent from the action plan that goes with the strategy.

The minister said the health contribution would go up to 8% as of next year but the total security burden would not be increased.

Under the new strategy, the health ministry will establish whether the healthcare system has become more efficient since the reform began in 2000.

Family doctors will be encouraged to work in group practices in order to provide 24/7 service and will be responsible for no more than 1,500 patients.

(Dnevnik)

The financial turmoil has affected the Bulgarian property market positively in protecting it from saturation and even a bubble, experts and consultants said.

The crisis has impacted on both housing and business projects and driven scores of investors out of Bulgaria’s densely overbuilt mountain and seaside resorts.

The retail centre segment is also braced up for a cool-off, and only a handful of the bog-box shopping centres set to mushroom all across the country will be completed, according to property experts.

“The situation is on the whole healthy rather than alarming. This means that it is only projects with solid investor capacity, a good concept and a long-term strategy that will be realised,” commented Colliers International co-manager David Davidov.

“And yet I think the global financial crisis spread to Bulgaria just in time to sober up the real estate market and help it avert the property bubble we have seen in Ireland, Russia, Romania, Kazakhstan and Latvia,” said Mihail Chobanov of Bulgarian Properties.

Forton International’s Sergei Koinov said the financial crisis has penetrated all property segments, including offices, where projects set to sprawl on 1.5 million sq m in the coming months and years will meet tepid demand.

(Dnevnik)

German steel distributor Kloeckner & Co has increased to 99.9% its stake in Bulgarian company Metalsnab, which trades in ferrous and non-ferrous metals, metal products, raw materials and metal scrap.

The international concern used to hold 77% in the Bulgarian firm, which has been renamed Kloeckner Metalsnab.

Kloeckner Metalsnab executive director Paul Spranger the company has poured some EUR 100,000 into its Bulgarian unit in the first half of the year hoping to outrun last year’s profit of EUR 37 million.

Spranger did not rule out possible further acquisitions in Bulgaria.

Now the company will target to boost efficiency, improve working atmosphere and tighten security.

Kloeckner Metalsnab sells some 90 percent of its produce on the domestic market and is active also in the Balkans, Cyprus, Germany and the Czech Republic. The company plans to step up pipe production, which now accounts for 10 percent of its total output, Spranger said.

In 1992 Kloeckner & Co and the Bulgarian company set up the joint venture Kloeckner Metal. Later on the German company acquired a 7% stake in Metalsnab to add a further 70% in March 2008.

“This move is an important step in our efforts to step up operations in Eastern Europe,” said Kloeckner & Co supervisory board chair Thomas Ludwig.

(Dnevnik)

Bulgarian Oil and Gas Exploration and Production Co. will spend BGN 11 million to operate a deposit near Kavarna, on the north coast, after obtaining a three-year permit.

The company will explore a 415 sq m field and be awarded a concession contract if it discovers oil and gas deposits. In 2004 it inked a concession to operate a gas field in the nearby Durankulak region and has signed contracts to explore in Pleven and Novachene.

The gas company, which is part of local industrial conglomerate Chimimport, recently changed its statutes to allow capital increases by a decision of the supervisory and management boards.

Oil and Gas Exploration and Production Co. will venture into real estate by spending nearly BGN 100 million on the construction of a golf course near Shabla, in the northeast. The municipality has made an in-kind contribution of 110 hectares to the course, which will be surrounded by one-family houses.

(Dnevnik)

As west European indices were rebounding on the approved U.S. bailout package, the Bulgarian stocks continued their losing run with the blue-chip SOFIX shedding over 2.6%, steeper than the benchmark indices in neighbouring Serbia and Turkey.

The index ended the session at 781.48 points, the lowest for the past 38 months.

The broader BG40 was down 2.9% to 192.8 points.

Dnevnik 20 of the 20 biggest and most liquid companies on the BSE retreated to 98.75 points in its biggest one-day decrease of over 3.3%.

BGREIT tracking the performance of real estate investment trusts slid 1.64% to close at 76.97 points.

Trade turnover was at BGN 2.7 million, and the market capitalisation shrank to BGN 16.13 billion.

“Investors massively offer ‘sell’ packages, everybody is on the seller side,” commented Ivan Ovcharov of Elana Trading. “We again saw small volumes and dropping indices and even the news coming from the US did not help them up,” he added.

(Dnevnik)