On June 30, a general shareholders’ meeting of the Bulgarian Stock Exchange (BSE) will discuss a letter from The Bulgarian Association of Licensed Investment Intermediaries (BALII) which demands a complete change of the BSE’s management.
In the letter, published on June 24, BALII demanded that the BSE’s board of directors be changed because “the governing style of the BSE’s management in the past year was marked by sidelining the opinions of professionals in the field”. The letter said that BSE management had kept them in the dark when taking decisions.
BALII’s members are shareholders at the BSE. The biggest shareholder is the Finance Ministry with its 44 per cent. The remaining stocks are split between investment intermediaries, commercial banks, institutional investors and physical entities.
The letter did acknowledge the BSE’s good financial results in 2007 but described them as insufficient and said that BALII’s members should have better representation on the board of directors. The Sofia Echo tried to contact BALII but could not reach them on the phone.
BALII’s letter came as BSE’s current management announced plans to pay out as a dividend 50 per cent of the profit after mandatory reserves and to give bonuses to board members. Shareholders will also vote on profit sharing worth a quarter of 2007 board members’ salaries.
This means that on June 30 the BSE will distribute 2.36 million leva, or a gross dividend of 0.40 leva a share, of its total profit of 5.2 million leva for 2007. In 2006 the BSE had a total profit of 1.67 million leva, which led to the BSE making its first dividend payout of 0.25 leva a share.
Overall, the BSE has a share capital of 5.87 million leva and its equity capital stood at 11.7 million leva in 2007. The profits from the two previous years went to a capital hike to 5.87 million leva from 293 393 leva. On June 25, the total daily turnover at the BSE was 8753 090 leva.
The June 30 shareholders’ meeting will take place against the background of the launch of the BSE’s new trading platform Xetra on June 16, allowing more than 5000 stocks trading on the BSE to be visible by foreign financial houses and traders licensed to trade on other Xetra-traded exchanges elsewhere in the world. The process was marked by serious difficulties which almost led to the postponement of the launch. In the end, it was given the green light. The German XETRA trading system replaces the RTS system used until now and its implementation is in compliance with the stipulations of a five-year contract with Deutsche Bourse.
