The expected slowdown and deterioration in the performance of Bulgarian firms will negatively impact on their owners and managers, experts and senior staffers told Dnevnik.

The key managers of the country's most traded companies, according to the Dnevnik 20 stock market index, pocketed more than eight million leva in salaries in 2008, more than 15 per cent higher than in 2007.

But with companies' sales and profit figures sharply lower in end-2008 and losses feared for 2009, this increase cannot possibly be maintained this year.

"If corporate results worsen further, it would be logical that salaries will be drastically squeezed in 2009," according to Vladislav Panev, board chairman at Status Capital, which runs the assets of two mutual funds.

The first signals of an expected sharp contraction in managers' pay are already being seen. The salaries of the majority owners of Monbat, an exporting car battery maker, have shrunk by 84 and 92 per cent, respectively, in 2008.

Companies working for foreign markets were the first to feel pain from the global economic crisis and started to see their profits slide back in mid-2008.

The expected revision of senior managers' salaries is also signalled in the banking sector.

For example, Corporate Commercial Bank (CCB) gave 6.27 per cent slimmer salaries and bonuses for 2008 compared with the bumper 2007, when Bulgaria's credit boom reached its highest since the start of the century.

The direct income of the bank's main shareholder, Tsvetan Vasilev, has fallen by about seven per cent to144 500 leva for the year.

Source: Dnevnik.bg