Eurohold signs deal to acquire CEZ's Bulgarian assets for 335 mln euros

EuroHold Bulgaria AD

20/06/2019 17:59

SOFIA/PRAGUE, June 20 (Reuters) - Bulgarian holding company
Eurohold  4EH.BB  has signed a deal to buy the Bulgarian assets
of Czech utility CEZ  CEZP.PR  for 335 million euros ($377.9
million), it said on Thursday. 
    Eurohold, active in insurance and asset management, entered
exclusive talks in April to acquire CEZ's assets in the Balkan
country including a power distributor that provides electricity
to more than 3 million Bulgarians.  urn:newsml:reuters.com:*:nL5N21Z1V8 
    The company plans to fund the deal with a combination of
equity and debt and has already mandated two global investment
banks to arrange the funding. 
    "Eurohold's acquisition of CEZ Group's assets in Bulgaria is
expected to be finalized after obtaining regulatory approvals,"
the company said in a statement.
    In April, Bulgaria's financial regulator launched checks
into Eurohold's financial situation, pointing out that power
distributors are part of European critical infrastructure and
directly linked to national security. 
    Electricity costs are also politically sensitive in the
Balkan nation of 7.1 million people, which is one of the poorest
in the European Union.
    CEZ, which launched arbitration proceedings seeking hundreds
of millions of euros from Bulgaria for its failure to protect
its energy investments in 2016, said the process would not be
affected by the deal and would continue.
    The company signed a contract to sell its assets in Bulgaria
to local energy company Inercom in 2018, but Bulgaria's
anti-monopoly regulator blocked the deal five months later.
 urn:newsml:reuters.com:*:nL8N21J51Z
    
 ($1 = 0.8864 euros)

 (Reporting by Tsvetelia Tsolova in Sofia and Jan Lopatka in
Prague; Editing by Jan Harvey)
 ((tsvetelia.tsolova@thomsonreuters.com; +359-2-93-99-731;))