Financial news

Investment fund in Bulgaria manages assets to the amount of BGN 2.4 billion. This what BNB’s data shows. Investment funds that operate in Bulgaria have increased their assets by BGN 350 million, as compared to June of last year. The increase is by nearly 30%. Assets of local funds are more than BGN 1 billion and total growth of assets is generated mostly by them. Assets in funds that invest in shares are increasing, though those of funds that invest in debentures drop. In terms of instruments, towards the end of June the greatest share of assets is held by shares and other forms of ownership, followed by deposits. Three months earlier position of deposits was leading. As far as geographical structure of securities held by resident investment funds is concerned, the share of residents of the European Union and Bulgaria decease. Obligations of funds to insurance and pension companies, and to the sector of "households" also go up.

Extraction of natural resources in Bulgaria rose by 10% in 2014 and thus reached 99 million tons. Industry’s expectations are that in 2015 this rate of growth will be kept, as even in the seconds half of the year it will even accelerate. Despite the increased yields value of production decreases-for the past year it was to the amount of BGN 2.37 billion, which is less by 8.1% as compared to 2013. The sector generates between 4 and 5% of the country’s GDP. In 2014, sectoral statistics showed increase in yields of natural resources in almost all subsectors except for liquid fuels where there is a decrease of 48%. This subsection though forms hardly 0.21% of total yields in the country. The greatest growth is reported for the other smallest subsection-extraction of natural stone materials, which rose by 18%, as compared to 2013 and by the end of 2014 it formed 0.5% of the total yield. Traditionally the greatest share in natural resources has solid fuels and metals. Last year they form respectively 34% and 32.3% of all extracted qualities. Only for last year the industry brought slightly over BGN 70 million to the state budget in the form of concession fees. For the first six months of the year the sum is BGN 66 million.

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

Concessions

Bulgarian government decided to terminate the concession procedure on three beaches. These are the Delfin Camping Site and Koral in the municipality of Tsarevo and the Ikantalaka 2 in the municipality of Kavarna, the press office of the cabinet announced. The concession on the Delfin and Koral beaches is terminated over discrepancy between the offers filed and the conditions set and due to presence of circumstances that are not envisaged in the decisions making process on their organisation. The procedure for the Ikantalaka 2 beach, on the other hand, is terminated over lack of filed and registered applications.

Companies

Ukrainian software development company Speedflow plans to relocate its operations from Odessa in Ukraine to Plovdiv, the second biggest city in Bulgaria The company intents to hire 50 new employees in Bulgaria by the end of the year.SpeedFlow group is a company that operates at full cycle - it makes products, produces them, supports them an works directly with customers all over the world. It has been operating in the industry for 20 years now. The company's major office is located in London, but Speedflow has an office in Hong Kong. Speedflow, a supplier of telecom billing systems and software solutions, had a total turnover of USD 39 million (EUR 35 million) in 2014. The number of people employed in the IT and outsourcing sector in Plovdiv has doubled over the past three years to some 4,000 - 4,500 people at present.

Bulgarian fast food co Aladin Foods is planning to expand its operations in Romania where it is already present. The company is in talks with retailer Kaufland Romania about opening new restaurants. Aladin Foods also plans to open another two restaurants in Bulgaria - in Sofia, and in Veliko Tarnovo, in the north of the country. At present Aladin Foods has a total of 28 fast food restaurants in nine Bulgarian cities. The company also owns a chicken meat processing factory, a potato processing plant and an Arabic bread bakery. It is currently investing BGN 1 million in Arabic bread-making equipment which will triple its capacity for the production of Arabic bread. The company also plans to invest BGN 900,000 in new equipment at the chicken meat processing factory in Saedinenie, in the south of the country, which will increase production to 20 tonnes per day. Aladin Foods currently employs over 800.

Cabinet appointed Bulgarian National Bank Governor Dimitar Radev as manager of the International Monetary Fund for Bulgaria. Cabinet also appointed BNB Deputy Governor and Head of Banking Supervision Dimitar Kostov deputy governor of the country in the Constituency Group World Bank - International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, International Finance Corporation Agency Multilateral Investment Guarantee and International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. This was reported by the press service of the Council of Ministers (CoM). The decision is connected with the recent management and functional changes at the BNB. This ensures representation of Bulgaria within international financial institutions to help stabilize and expand international contacts and protect the interests of the country.

Even as talks between Moscow and Ankara on the Turkish Stream gas pipeline remain deadlocked, four Balkan countries are set to discuss an extension of the pipeline into Central Europe, a report in Russian daily Vedomosti claimed, only a day after Bulgaria’s Energy Minister said that Sofia has not given up on the South Stream project. South Stream was meant to take Russian gas into Hungary – crossing Bulgaria and Serbia, bypassing the existing Ukrainian transit route – but ran afoul of EU’s regulations that require gas pipelines to give access to third-party suppliers, a provision that Russia’s state-owned gas company Gazprom rejected. In December 2014, Russian President Vladimir Putin cancelled the project, blaming Bulgaria and the EC for its failure, and proposed redirecting the pipeline towards Turkey. Bulgaria has continued preparatory work for the South Stream project and officials in Sofia have repeatedly said that they were interested in seeing the pipeline built as long as it meets EU regulations. Energy Minister Temenouzhka Petkova re-iterated that position on August 18 in reply to comments made by Putin earlier this week, when he said that Bulgaria had “given up” on the pipeline.

Europe

The German parliament voted overwhelming Wednesday to back Greece's third bailout in five years after Chancellor Angela Merkel managed to contain a rebellion in the ranks of her conservative bloc. While 454 members of the Bundestag voted in favour of the 86-billion-euro (96-billion-dollar) bailout, 113 opposed it. Merkel's CDU-led ruling coalition has an 80-per-cent majority in the Bundestag. The "no" votes reflected widespread scepticism in the German electorate of the new bailout, which was the culmination of six months of acrimonious negotiations that nearly resulted in Greece crashing out of the eurozone. The Dutch parliament is also to vote on the bailout package Wednesday after it won approval in Spain, Estonia, Austria, Latvia, Lithuania and Finland this week. Wednesday's votes in the German and Dutch parliaments are being held one day before Greece is supposed to make 3.4 billion euros in loan repayments to the European Central Bank. The approval of the bailout is crucial to Athens making the payment.

America

Google is attempting to put itself at the centre of domestic wireless networks with a new “smart router” that promises to improve WiFi quality and security. OnHub’s launch comes weeks before Apple is expected to unveil its latest home technology device, with an update to its Apple TV set-top box that will act as a wireless “smart home” hub. The launch also puts Google into competition with many cable companies that offer their own home hubs for watching TV and getting online. FirstFT is our new essential daily email briefing of the best stories from across the web Thanks to the inclusion of Bluetooth and other wireless connectivity, Google’s $200 OnHub will be able to control the “internet of things” inside the home as more consumers buy connected peripherals such as wireless speakers, thermostats and security cameras. The project has been developed over the past two years by teams who worked on the Chrome operating system and Google Access, the unit responsible for its superfast fibre optic-based network. Its 12 antennas can regularly scan the local environment to adjust for interference from other wireless networks, based in part on analysis of data samples done in Google’s cloud. Passwords and other settings can be managed from a smartphone app for Android and iOS.

Asia

Fresh anxieties about China’s commitment to steadying the stock market sparked heavy losses in Shanghai Tuesday, despite signals of a housing recovery and the central bank’s latest steps to keep cash from fleeing. The Shanghai Composite Index tumbled 6.1% to 3748.16, just 240 points above its recent trough on July 8 and 27% off its June peak. The smaller Shenzhen Composite Index fell 6.6% to 2174.42. In Hong Kong, shares fell 1.4%, turning negative for the year, and a gauge of Chinese companies listed in the city fell 1.8%. Worries about the health of the world’s no. 2 economy continues to drag industrial metals and regional currencies to multiyear lows. China is one of the world’s biggest consumers of commodities and shaky demand poses a threat to its trading partners across Asia. However, unlike the fallout from last week’s devaluation of the Chinese currency, the spillover to other regions has been limited, with the Stoxx Europe 600 index slightly higher by late morning. Losses among stocks of state-owned enterprises in Shanghai started building earlier in the morning amid skepticism about Beijing’s commitment to reform. Reports of efforts to accelerate such plans, long touted as a way to open up bulky conglomerates to private investment and market forces, had gained momentum in recent weeks and buoyed related stocks.

Chirakman cape

The Chirakman cape is one of the symbols of Kavarna (northern part of the Bulgarian Black Sea coast). It is located 3 km to the south of Kavarna and is the end of a lovely valley, through which passes the road to the port and the sea. Here, an intensive life has been bubbling for thousand of years. Not long ago archeologists found here a fortified fortress wall date to the 4th century AD. The founding showed that the town of Kavarna was one of the most fortified settlements at the West Coast of the Black Sea during the late-antique age. The fortified wall was found thanks to materials of the personal archive of the Czech archeologist Karel Shkorpil who worked in Bulgaria in the end 19-20th century. In the first century BC a destructive earthquake took place and split the cape and a great part of it sank into the sea. This is still of a great interest for the tourists.

On that day:  Sinemorets The Battle of Anchialus