Holding structure Eurohold Bulgaria would merge its insurance business into a new venture, the company said on October 15, as quoted by Dnevnik daily.

A decision to this effect would be made at an extraordinary general shareholder meeting on November 27.

The new venture would be called EuroIns Insurance Group and it would control the insurance company EuroIns, the health insurance fund St. Nikolai Chudotvorets and the recently acquired Romanian insurance firm Asitrans Asigurari. The equity of EuroIns Insurance Group would be formed through creating a pool of all the shares that the holding has in the three companies.

The packages Eurohold had in the three would be contributed to the new firm, which would become part of the holding, its supervisory board chairman Assen hristov was quoted as saying.

There were two main reasons for the unification, the goal of achieving a 4-5 per cent market share on the general insurance segment in the Balkans and tighter requirements imposed by the state regulatory bodies. The practice in the European Union showed that regulators were keener on issuing permits for majority stake acquisitions in insurance companies to insurers only, instead of holdings that had also/or other fields of activity, Eurhold said.