Financial news

Bulgaria’s Industrial Production Index, seasonally adjusted, has increased by 2.0% in January 2015 as compared to December 2014, show the preliminary data of the Bulgarian National Statistical Institute (NSI). In January 2015 working day adjusted Industrial Production Index rose by 1.7% in comparison with the same month of 2014. In January 2015 as compared to December 2014, the seasonally adjusted Industrial Production Index increased in the electricity, gas, steam and air conditioning supply by 6.5%, in the manufacturing by 0.8% and in the mining and quarrying industry by 0.3%. The most significant increases of production in the manufacturing were registered in the manufacture of other transport equipment by 44.9%, in the repair and installation of machinery and equipment by 26.6%, in the manufacture of machinery and equipment n.e.c by 11.9%, in the manufacture of furniture by 11.2%, in the manufacture of rubber and plastic products by 10.4%. There were decreases in the manufacture of tobacco products by 9.6%, in the manufacture of leather and related products by 3.5%, in the manufacture of basic pharmaceutical products and pharmaceutical preparations by 2.4%, and in the manufacture of other non-metallic mineral products by 2.3%.

According to the preliminary data, in January 2015 the index of production in ‘Construction’ sector calculated on the base of seasonally adjusted data was 1.7% below the level of the previous month, the National Statistical Institute (NSI) reported. In January 2015 working day adjusted data showed a decrease by 4.2% in the construction production, compared to the same month of 2014. In January 2015 the construction production, calculated from the seasonally adjusted data, was below the level of the previous month. Index of production of building construction fell by 2.5% and the production of civil engineering - by 0.7%.

	Mineral Fuels, Tailoring Products, Canning, Perfumery and Cosmetics, Furniture, Meat Products, Wine, Wood-processing Industry

Companies

Gramercy Select Master Fund has sold its 35%-plus stake in Bulgarian-American Credit Bank (BACB) to Delaware-registered LTBI Holdings. There are no indications of any deal or transfer of power in BACB, the newspaper comments. “We’ve been told it was an in-house transfer for the group,” chief legal adviser and member of BACB’s Management Board Silvia Kirilova said. Gramercy is the second-largest shareholder in BACB after CSFI, which is run by BACB Supervisory Board chairperson Tsvetelina Borislavova. CSFI controls 61.5% of the lender. With a total of BGN 815 million in assets, BACB is Bulgaria’s 19th largest lender (December 2014). The bank has been operating in the red since 2010. In the past five years its combined loss stands at BGN 92 million. In 2014 alone, the bank reported a loss of BGN 8.9 million.

Bulgaria's financial consultancy Holding Coop-Yug said local real estate investment company Innovation Trade has acquired a stake of 22.4% in it. The company bought 623,882 shares in Holding Coop-Yug on February 25, the consultancy said in a bourse filing. Meanwhile, also on February 25, Bulgaria's Bagiana sold 623,882 shares in Holding Coop-Yug, the filing indicated. The value of the deals was not disclosed. Sofia-based Innovation Trade was set up in 2011 and is fully-owned by local Inter Finance Invest.

Producer of high- quality pallets Palemontech Spltd. is completing a strategy for expansion of its presence in whole Europe, including the Bulgarian market. The Swiss owner Andre Urech has already announced his plans to build a new plant in Montana at the exit to Lom. To that purpose he has bought a site with an area of 30 acres, assessed at more than EUR 500 thousand. Production warehouses will be constructed at an area of 5000 square meters. They will be equipped with modern high-tech machinery for metal processing. Plans are construction of the plant to start in the middle of the present year. Term for completion of the plant is 38 months. Thus 100 new jobs will be created. In several years’ time Palemontech Spltd. considers expansion of its manufacturing base, which means that employees there will reach 150. Palemontech Spltd. is a Swiss company that is a Max Urech Lager-und Fördertechnik’s distributor. It produces metal pallets for construction waste and hard materials, folding galvanized mesh pallets and galvanized folding upgrades.

SG Expressbank and the Regional Urban Development Fund issued an eight-year investment loan to Plovdiv bread producer Simid Agro at the total volume of over EUR 14 million under EU initiative JESSICA. The co-financing of the bank amounts to EUR 9,586,451. The funds will be used for the establishment of a modern, energy-efficient factory for frozen bread products and new equipment for the Southern Industrial Zone in Plovdiv.

If its license had not been revoked in end-2014, Corporate Commercial Bank (CorpBank) would currently rank 15th in terms of assets volume among Bulgarian banks. The current value of its assets is BGN 1.9 billion, compared to over BGN 7 billion ahead of its closure, the consolidated report of the bank published in the end of last week shows. As a result from the external audit a total of BGN 3.9 billion of credits have been written off and cessions and deductions have been accounted for at the volume of over BGN 1 billion, which has led to a negative equity of BGN 3.7 billion and losses of BGN 4.2 billion for 2014. What comes next is the initiation of insolvency proceedings, ahead of which the court should rule on the appeals of shareholders against CorpBank’s license revocation. In view of this, with each passing month the chances of the Bulgarian Deposit Insurance Fund (BDIF) and the remaining creditors of the bank to recover a significant part of assets are dwindling further.

Europe

Spanish home prices posted their first annual increase last year since 2007 as the property market recovers from the worst recession in the country’s democratic history. Prices climbed 1.8 percent in the fourth quarter, from the year-earlier period, and 0.2 percent from the previous three months, according to data compiled by the National Statistics Institute. More than two years since applying for a European Union rescue of its banking system, Spain has become one of the fastest-growing economies in the euro area as exports surge and investment rebounds. The country is poised to have the highest growth since 2007 this year. Tinsa, Spain’s largest homes appraiser, said last month that home prices fell 2.7 percent last year, taking the drop since values peaked in 2007 to almost 42 percent.

America

Oil prices will reverse their recent gains as global crude inventories begin to increase again, with U.S. crude likely to drop as far as $40 a barrel in the near-term, Goldman Sachs said. Oil prices rose by almost a third between January and February on the back of Middle East supply disruptions, strong winter demand and high refinery margins. That followed a rout that had seen price falls of around 60 percent between June 2014 and January this year. But Goldman said that "the activity pull is sequentially weakening" and that global crude inventories would therefore rise, pushing West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude to $40 a barrel, levels last seen at the peak of the global financial crisis in late 2008, early 2009. It stood at around $49.40 on Monday. "While we continue to forecast a strong demand recovery in 2015, we believe that sequentially weaker activity, the end of winter and the end of potential restocking demand, will lead to a sequential deceleration in demand-growth as we enter the spring," the bank said.

Asia

China's monthly trade surplus hit a record $60.6bn in February, as exports grew and imports slid back. Exports were up 48.3% year on year to $169.2bn, and imports dropped by a fifth to $108.6bn, said the country's General Administration of Customs. The growth in exports was well ahead of analyst expectations. China's economy grew by 7.4% in 2014, its weakest for almost a quarter of a century, and recent indicators show signs the slowdown is continuing. Customs officials put the surge in exports down to a flurry of activities by companies to get orders processed before the Chinese New Year, which fell in the middle of February this year. "Affected by the Spring Festival factors, export companies in the country again rushed to export ahead of the holiday and only resumed working after it," a statement said. The surplus figure stood at $8.9bn in the same period last year.

Thracian Tomb of Sveshtari

Sveshtari Village is situated in the Sboryanovo reserve in the north-eastern part of Bulgaria. A Thracian tomb was discovered there in 1982 during excavations of a sepulchral mound. In approximation, it dates back to first half of the 3rd century BC It consists of three chambers - an entrance chamber and two antechambers, covered by a mound. The central camera of the vault is rich in decoration - it is designed as a facade of a temple with the image of a horseman, being bestowed with a golden wreath by a goddess, and a religious procession; on three of the walls - a high relief with 10 stone statues of clad women figures. The funeral rites, the building technique, the architectural design and the decoration, distinguished for Hellenistic models, provide evidence that a Thracian ruler has been buried there. The Sveshtari Tomb was included in Unesco's World Heritage List in 1985.

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