Bulgarian Telecommunications Company (BTC) has completed the largest deal for office space in country by renting more than 23 000 sq m of offices in the European Trade Center in Tsarigradsko Chaussee, next to the main base of the future Carrefour.

With this mega office deal, BTC will amalgamate its entire staff and management in a 16-storey building, the largest one in the complex, making it the largest such transaction on the Bulgarian market ever.

"European Trade Center OOD is proud to have acquired a top tenant, securing a lucrative 20-year contract with which it has rented out a full one-third of its capacity with one strike," Bernard Moscheni, chief executive of BTC, said, as quoted by Stroitelstvo Gradut in its February 9 2009 edition.

"The creation of a primary headquarters is part of the new policy of BTC, which aims for substantial improvement of the quality of service, human resource management, optimisation of expenditures and securing a healthy economic growth for the future," Moscheni said.

"We decided that our headquarters would be in the newest, most modern business trade centre in Bulgaria. We wanted to offer our staff an augmented and ergonomical working environment that would contribute to the speed and effectiveness of our services to our end clients," he said.

BTC will be able to occupy its new home in January 2010. The unification of all branches of BTC is a sequence to the merger of BTC with its mobile operator Vivatel.

"This is a massive, unprecedented deal on the Bulgarian market. This is about a vast amount of office space, and this deal is a testament in itself that the market in Bulgaria is developing, and that the business outlook for the future is a positive one," said David Davidov, manager of offices trade and industrial parcels at Colliers International, Bulgaria. The deal is for 20 years, with an initial annual rent of 3 480 000 euro, including a six-month period free of rent.

European Trade Center constitutes five large buildings with a total of 70 000 sq m of office space, created with the latest green technologies to reduce the carbon footprint and make it the most energy-efficient centre in the country.

It will be also the home of the French giant Carrefour in Bulgaria, which completed a deal for 7500 sq m of space. The centre is scheduled to open for business in January 2010, but companies will start moving in starting November 2009.