The Luxembourg-registered Bulgarian Acquisition Company II S.a.r.L., part of Oman ’s State General Reserve Fund, has asked the local antitrust commission to approve the planned purchase of a 30% stake in the country’s tenth largest Corporate Bank from the local company Bromak. The latter owns directly 57.8% of the lender and controls indirectly the other big stakeholder, which holds 23.3% of the bank. The remaining 18.9% of the shares are traded on the local bourse. The price of the deal has not been unveiled by now. The takeover should be approved by the central bank as well. The net profit of Corporate Bank surged 74.1% to BGN 40.3mn (EUR 20.6mn) last year, accelerating from 63.8% y/y in Jan-Sep. It outruns the annual plan by 2.7%. The assets of the bank rose 18.8% in a year to BGN 2.1bn as of the end of December. The return on equity and assets improved to 21.9% and 2.3% last year from 18.3% and 1.9% in 2007 while bad loans were only 0.18% of the total. Corporate Bank reports that the world financial crisis has not affected negatively its performance. The market capitalisation reached BGN 390mn as of yesterday, down by 27% in a year, but strongly outperforming other banking equities that lost nearly 90% of their capitalisation on the local bourse.
The assets of the Oman ’s State General Reserve Fund stood at USD 8.2bn at the end of last year. The Fund partners the UK private equity firm Equest Investment Balkans in the large-scale ski project Super Borovets in the Rila Mountain , which is estimated at EUR 500mn but is put in a standby mode due to the global economic crisis.