Financial news

Bulgaria’s Finance Ministry is getting ready for the first bond issue worth BGN 6.9 billion after the government ratified a contract with four international banks on a new BGN 16 billion government debt. The government plans to place BGN 3 billion in government bonds on the international markets this March. Therefore, finance Minister Vladislav Goranov, deputy governor of the Bulgarian National Bank Kalin Hristov, and banks-intermediaries (Citigroup, HSBC, Societe Generale, and UniCredit) will start a roadshow in European capitals to present the bond issue. Bulgarian government expects to negotiate a record low interest rate of 2%-2.5% on the bond issue.

At EUR 184, Bulgaria had the lowest minimum monthly wage in the EU as of January 1, 2015, according to Eurostat. Luxembourg topped the table with EUR 1,923. The disparities in minimum wages across the EU States are considerably smaller once price level differences are eliminated: minimum wages in those Member States with relatively lower price levels become relatively higher when expressed in purchasing power standard (PPS ), and relatively lower in those Member States with higher price levels. The gap in minimum wage rates between the EU Member States was reduced from a ratio of 1:10 in EUR to a ratio of 1:4 in PPS, ranging from 380 PPS per month in Bulgaria to 1,561 PPS in Luxembourg. Compared with 2008, minimum wages in 2015, expressed in national currency, increased in every Member State having a national minimum wage, except Greece where they dropped by 14 per cent and Ireland where they remained unchanged. The highest increases between 2008 and 2015 were registered in Romania (+95 per cent), Bulgaria (+64 per cent), Slovakia (+58 per cent) and Latvia (+57 per cent).

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Companies

Despite the accumulated deficit in the National Electric Company there will be no significant rise in the electricity prices from July 1 this year, the Bulgarian regulator's representative Evgenia Haritonova informed. 2016, on the other hand, will bring a serious price hike due to the deregulation of the electricity markets. Haritanova refused to predict how much the current prices will jump in this summer, saying that the first estimates of the EDCs will be submitted to the Commission by 31 March. The significant jump in the electricity prices is expected next year due to the full liberalization of the market from 1 January 2016. The prices for households users, however, will remain regulated until June 30, 2016.

William Hill, the greatest British and leading bookmaker with more than 15 thousand employees all over the world is forming a team of developers in Sofia. Partner in the project for opening of a development center in our cpuntry is a company under the name of Questers. Latelty William Hill has expanded tremendously its business related to e-betting. The company has been examining different locations and partners in Europe and opted for Questers as its partner in creating and managing Bulgarian team of Java developers. The team will be part of existing structures of William Hill and will work together with the other centers of the company, adding new products to its portfolio and helping for its growth. Questers is a British company with Bulgarian participation.

Bulgarian drug maker Sopharma said it has completed the absorption of its Bulgarian subsidiary, Bulgarian Rose-Sevtopolis. The merger has been entered into the country's commercial register. The company has also initiated a procedure for registering a capital increase of BGN 2.8 million. Sopharma and Bulgarian Rose-Sevtopolis signed a deal on June 19 last year under which Bulgarian Rose-Sevtopolis was to merge with its parent company and be wound up without liquidation. In relation to the merger deal, Sopharma increased its capital to BGN 134.8 million from BGN 132 million. The drug manufacturer has issued an additional 2,798,527 shares with a par value of BGN 1 and an issue price of BGN 4.14 apiece, which were distributed among the shareholders of Bulgarian Rose-Sevtopolis.

Bulgarian company Sportal has acquired mobile application The Livescore App which is among the most popular in its segment with more than 3.5 million downloads from nearly 150 countries worldwide. The deal whose price is not disclosed is part of the company’s investment strategy for entering new markets. The application for mobile phones offers data for football matches, teams and individual players, transmits live scores, shows forecasts for results of games, gives opportunity for betting and chat with users. The service is available in 13 languages. In a month’s time other seven languages, including Chinese and Korean will be added. The application is purchased directly by the developer. It is expected that The Livescore App will reach 20 million downloads in the next three years, which would affirm it at the international market. Sportal has its own applications for mobile devices, results of which have encourages the company’s team to focus on the international scene.

Max, the mobile Internet services provider, said it has launched a new real-time billing system that will enable the company to introduce products so far unseen on the Bulgarian market. The new billing system based on the Mind platform will allow Max to offer to its customers various services including 4G data sharing within families and companies, prepaid 4G services, high definition voice (VoLTE) and the range of mobile broadband services, the company said in a statement. Max also said it had selected the vendor Mind because of its flexibility and the way the platform could be tailored to the new products Max is developing. “This is a significant step in the transition of Max to a next generation 4G carrier. The technology is very different from that used by our competitors and we are pleased that the implementation has gone so smoothly. Now we can be more creative in designing products that take advantage of the 4G broadband revolution in Bulgaria,” Max CEO Peter Covell explained.

Europe

RBS news flow over the last week had been signalling that investors needed to wind-back hopes of a profit in 2014, after seven-straight years of losses. Sure enough, instead of the GBP 3.9 bln adjusted profit investors were hoping for, judging by even the most recent consensus forecasts, the 79% UK government-owned bank booked a GBP 3.5 bln loss. It apparently decided to continue for another year, the long, painful wash-out of missteps it made during more fortunate times. This time, the loss was due to a write-off from RBS’s problematic US-based Citizens business, charges from various foreign exchange investigations and for provisions related to mis-selling of financial products. This brings the total losses reported by the bank since the financial crisis to GBP 49.5 bln, more than the GBP 45 bln UK taxpayers paid to bail it out in 2008. Even so, unfortunately, further annual losses seem all but inevitable.

America

Citigroup Inc (C.N) said additional government authorities have started probes of possible breaches of anti-money laundering laws at its Banamex USA unit. The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, a unit of the U.S. Treasury and the California Department of Business Oversight have asked the company for information on its compliance with the Bank Secrecy Act and anti-money laundering rules, Citigroup disclosed in an annual filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Wednesday. The disclosure comes one year after Citigroup revealed a criminal probe by a federal grand jury in Massachusetts and inquiries from the U.S. Federal Deposit Insurance Corp into the matter. Citigroup said it is cooperating with the investigations. Banamex USA is an affiliate of Mexico City-based Banamex, which Citigroup bought in 2001 and which operates a few branches in the United States.

Asia

Wanxiang, the Chinese company that bought up the shattered pieces of Fisker after the luxury plug-in hybrid maker went under, has had plans for a while to bring the brand back from the dead. But first, everything will need to be rebranded. So Fisker will become Elux, according to an unnamed source talking to Reuters. The same source said that the Karma would be renamed as well, presumably to something less smug, but we don't know what that will be yet. The whole thing was supposed to happen by early 2015, but that has now been pushed back to sometime in 2016. The car will also get a price increase of about 20 percent, up to $135,000, despite the fact that it was also reported the styling won't be updated much at all. Plug-in vehicles have been selling in somewhat better numbers than they were when Fisker first went under, but it is still a very small segment of the market, and we can't help but wonder how charging even more money for basically the same thing will help the situation, new name or no.

The Kresna Gorge

The Kresna gorge is located along the Struma River valley in Southwestern Bulgaria. The river runs between the Pirin and Malashevska Mountain for 18 km, and forms sheer and picturesque slopes of the defile. The Kresna gorge is a region of high world and European nature-protecting activity. It is a biological corridor for the migration of the big mammals between the Balkan Peninsula Mountains, as well as birds’ migration path. The gorge includes the places of living of 58 mammal species, some of which are the bear, wolf, otter, marten, red deer, wild cat, and others. 17 species of bats are found here, which is more than in the whole Central Europe. 232 species of birds, 31 species of amphibians and reptiles, 14 species of fish, and 942 daily and night butterflies are registered in the gorge, some of which can be seen only here. 457 different plants were counted in the Kresna gorge, as a number of them are endemic species.

On that day:  The Koprivets monastery Reverend Petka Bulgarska