Bulgarian Mass Privatisation: Implications on Corporate Governance

Privatisation is the major component in all the transition processes carried out in the Central and East European countries. With different pace and scale across the counties, it took distinct, sometimes even opposing forms. The volume presents the results from a comparative research on mass privatisation schemes in Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Poland, Romania, Slovakia. The underlying field research had been carried out simultaneously in the all five CEE countries, following a common analytical model. Chaperet 1 presents the data and results for Bulgaria. The Bulgarian case shaped in almost 90% of all the Privatisation funds acquiring the legal form of a classical holding company. Although, it was not clear what was the goal of such a large process; there were signs that it is mostly a willingness to avoid the rigid legal regulation imposed on the investment intermediaries and not a strong inclination against the active monitoring. Those doubts were fuelled by previous experience history of such holdings, but still did not show a firm predominance of the governing behaviour over the companies. Perhaps, the most important observation was that in all the countries there was no clear or¬i¬en¬tation towards one or another of the best world-wide known models for corporate go¬ver¬¬nance. In all of them the stock markets were welcomed and many efforts were put on their develop¬ment, but in all of the countries the banks played (or tried) very important role in privatisation.