Tue, May 22 2012

Business Briefs

Fri, Aug 01 2008 11:00 CET 563 Views

FINES
Bulgaria's Commission for Protection of Competition imposed on July 28 a 150 000 leva fine on four foreign law firms operating in Bulgaria because of unfair commercial practices, the CPC announced in a statement on its website. CMS Cameron McKenna was fined 50 000 leva, DLA Piper Weiss-Tessbach was fined 40 000 leva and CHSH Cerha Hempel Spiegelfeld Hlawati and CMS Reich-Rohrwig Hainz were given a 30 000 leva fine each. All the companies were penalised on the grounds of breaching Bulgaria's Law for Protection of Competition.

RE-ELECTION
The Bulgarian Stock Exchange (BSE) has scheduled for September 23 a general meeting of shareholders to sort out the mandate of its current board of directors. The general meeting was called a week after a Dnevnik story revealed irregularities in the board's mandate entry in the commercial register. It came to light that the board was registered for a new five-year mandate through 2012 without the mandatory prior sanction from shareholders. The bourse management blamed the controversy on the online form provided by the Registry Agency, which, they claimed, lacked clarity.

GSM
Bulgaria's telecom regulator has made equal allocations of the idle frequencies in the 900 megahertz spectrum to Bulgaria's three wireless carriers, a source at the Communications Regulation Commission told Dnevnik daily. The frequency bands were awarded despite earlier claims by industry experts that none of the three wireless carriers would be able to prove they needed the additional resource because they had topped out their initial allocation. The carriers Mobiltel, Vivatel and GloBul, are expected to pay between four and five million leva for the new allocations. The price is tied to a number of parameters, like the number of years remaining in an operator's licence.

COVER
The hundreds of millions of euro frozen by the European Commission under the Phare, Ispa and Sapard programmes for alleged malfeasance will be covered by the budget surplus, local media reported after the two-day meeting of the leading coalition in Bansko. Bulgaria's Prime Minister Sergei Stanishev said on July 27 that he would ask each of the agencies involved in absorption of EU funds to carry out careful inspections of projects under the Phare and Sapard programmes to determine which projects should be proritised for further development, mediapool.bg said.

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Investors keen on clean energy, infrastructure, real estate

DLA Piper opened its Bulgarian office in 2006 and now employs about 15 lawyers. It is in talks to expand its local business through acquisitions of new partners.

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Appointments

Employment Agency

Employment Agency

Kamelia Lozanova has been appointed the executive director of the Employment Agency, a position she has held ad interim since September 2011, following the resignation of her predecessor Rossitsa Stelianova. Prior to that, Lozanova was the agency's deputy executive director in charge of international projects and European programmes. She has been with the agency for more than 20 years. Lozanova has a degree in Slavonic philology from the St Kliment Ohridski University of Sofia.

Uniqa

Uniqa

Gloria Dimitrova has been appointed executive director and member of the managing board at Uniqa Life Insurance Bulgaria. Dimitrova began her career in 1998 at the insurance supervision directorate, but moved to the private sector and worked for professional services and insurance brokerage firm Marsh&McLennan and US insurer AIG, both in Bulgaria and the Middle East. She joined Uniqa as regional director for Sofia in 2010. Dimitrova has a degree in economics from the University for National and World Economy in Sofia and a master's degree in insurance from the Business Academy in Svishtov.

Beiersdorf

Beiersdorf

Bedros Kalfayan, general manager of skin care and cosmetics company Beiersdorf Bulgaria, will oversee the parent's company units in Romania and Moldova starting April 1. Following company restructuring, Beiersdorf's subsidiaries in the three countries were merged and are now one unit, part of Beiersdorf Central and Eastern Europe. Kalfayan joined Beiersdorf in 2007 as sales manager and was promoted to general manager in 2008. Prior to that, he worked for Axxon Bulgaria, Ferrero and Rubella. Kalfayan has a master's degree in industrial management from the Technical University in Sofia.

Kamenitza

Kamenitza

Yassen Lyubenov is the new head of marketing at Bulgarian beer brewer Kamenitza. Lyubenov has 12 years of experience in marketing in the fast-moving consumer goods sector and has started his career as assistant brand manager at Kraft Foods Bulgaria. He later became brand manager at Wrigley Bulgaria, with responsibilities for Bulgaria and Macedonia. Prior to joining Kamenitza, he was senior marketing manager at Wrigley Russia, where he was in charge of brand expansion into Ukraine, Belarus, Central Asia and the Caucasus. Lyubenov has a bachelor's degree in international business administration from the University of Lincoln, UK.

Hewlett-Packard

Hewlett-Packard

Sasha Bezuhanova has been appointed Hewlett-Packard public sector director for emerging markets, where she will oversee HP public sector activities in 63 countries, including Bulgaria. Bezuhanova will also be in charge of HP's relations with the European Union. Bezuhanova has been HP's public sector director for Central and Eastern Europe since 2008; before that she was general manager of HP Bulgaria since 1998. Bezuhanova has a master's degree in electronics from the Technical University in Sofia and has completed a managment programme at INSEAD.