Kapital weekly and Forem Consulting will host the first ever conference on mergers&acquisitions (M&A) in Bulgaria, Dnevnik daily reported on April 17. The conference will take place on April 23 in Sofia and will offer a meeting point for financiers, M&A experts and investors, the papper said.

The conference will focus on M&A-geared growth, as well as on opportunities to finance such deals in Bulgaria.

Panelists – among them A.T. Kearney, McKinsey&Company and Deutsche Bank executives - will present an overview of the M&A market in 2007, as well as ways to finance deals through legal and financial analysis.

The conference comes at a time when the value of mergers and acquisitions is declining sharply. According to Bloomberg, the first quarter of 2008 witnessed M&A deals worth $656.2 billion worldwide, a decrease of 30 per cent on the year.

Contrary to the global trend, however, the Central and Eastern European region is expected to report reverse dynamics. The 1.6 billion euro sale of Bulgarian Telecommunications Company to the investment arm of US insurer AIG in 2007 was one of the largest M&A deals in the region. Other landmark transactions were the sales of SIBank and DZI to KBC of Belgium.

Kapital and Dnevnik are published by Economedia, the parent company of Sofia Echo Media, which publishes The Sofia Echo.