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Southeast Europe
June 22, 2018 www.intellinews.com I Page 15
Daily protests have also been held in Skopje in front of the parliament since Zaev announced on June 12 he had reached the deal with Tsipras. On June 17 Macedonia’s main opposition party VMRO-DPMNE staged a huge protest in the city of Bitola against the signing of the deal. More protests have taken place outside the parliament since then, though VMRO-DPMNE says its MPs will fight the deal within the parliament.
While the parliament swiftly ratified the deal on June 20 — with 69 votes in favour and none against at a session boycotted by VMRO-DPMNE MPs — so far President Gjorge Ivanov has refused to sign it.
Unless he relents the deal will be returned to the
parliament for a new vote and then if ratified, the president is obliged to sign it.
Zaev said that procedures to impeach the president will be launched if he fails to sign the deal, to which Ivanov replied “Let Zaev garner the support of 80 MPs and launch an impeachment procedure”.
Even though Zaev recently carried out a govern- ment reshuffle with the aim of expanding his par- liamentary majority, he still does not have the two- thirds support in the parliament needed to launch an impeachment procedure — or for constitutional changes, which will become a problem when his government seeks to change the country’s name.
Poultry company Gradus holds Bulgaria's biggest IPO in 10 years
Denitsa Koseva in Sofia
Bulgaria’s biggest poultry company Gradus sold 43,961,878 shares during the first day of listing of its shares on Bulgarian Stock Exchange in the biggest IPO for the past 10 years, bourse data showed on June 18.
Gradus announced plans for an IPO in February, seeking to raise its capital by at least BGN100mn (€51.1mn).
On June 18, the IPO exceeded the success thresh- old of 36.1mn shares, according to bourse data. The IPO auction will continue on Tuesday.
Trade in Gradus shares generated a turnover of BGN79.1mn. Gradus has offered 25% of its shares, distributed in 55.6mn shares, at a price range of BGN1.80-2.35.
The poultry company plans to invest the money in the upgrade and expansion of its production facilities. The company wants to gain more inter-
national markets and to develop a relatively new line of production for pork and pork products.
Previously, First Investment Bank raised BGN107mn from an IPO in 2007, while the most successful recent listings were for between BGN10mn and BGN13mn.
More Bulgarian companies will be motivated to launch IPOs on the bourse in Sofia following the success of Gradus’s listing, Investor.bg reported, quoting the head of the financial markets division of Elana Trading, Dimitar Georgiev.
According to Georgiev, this success will motivate new companies to list on the bourse and new IPOs can be expected in the coming months.
Another factor that will boost the market is a Eu- ropean Union programme that is covering com- pletely the costs of companies that want to list their shares on the bourse.