Shares in the Bulgarian Stock Exchange fell on the bourse’s first day as a publicly listed company with the country’s finance minister saying talks would start soon on selling its strategic stake.
The Bulgarian bourse is one of the smallest in central and eastern Europe but could get caught up in the region’s gradual moves to consolidate exchanges in the past 12 months. In October, the Warsaw Stock Exchange started trading as a public company.
This time last year, the Wiener Börse finalised a new holding structure for Vienna and its three counterpart exchanges in Hungary, Slovenia and the Czech Republic – called CEE Stock Exchange Group, or CEESEG.
Simeon Djankov, Bulgaria’s finance minister, said at a briefing on Thursday the government would “hold negotiations for selling a majority stake in the bourse to a strategic investor from this point on”.
“This process will take some time. It won’t happen within a week or a month. The first step was to make the stock exchange public, ensure its transparency and get a price estimate.”
According to Bloomberg, the exchange’s shares closed at 2.43 lev at 1:45pm with 65,070 sold, valuing the exchange at 16m lev ($10.7m). The government retains a 50.05 per cent stake.
Alex Bebov, who runs BAC Securities, an investment firm that is a member of the Bulgarian and Romanian exchanges, said Nasdaq OMX, Deutsche Börse, Warsaw and Wiener Börse had all expressed interest in the exchange in the past.
“The most likely outcome is someone looking to consolidate some of the exchanges in the region. That points to Vienna and Warsaw,” he said.
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