[Intl-tobacco] 5 Bids Submitted for Bulgaria's Tobacco Monopoly Sale Consultant

[Robert Weissman]

5 Bids Submitted for Bulgaria's Tobacco Monopoly Sale Consultant
Sofia News Agency
 February 2, 2004

 Five companies submitted offers in the contest for privatisation consultant
 of the sale deal for Bulgaria's tobacco monopoly Bulgartabac before the
 deadline expired on February 2. These are SG Corporate Finance Advisory,
 Paris; JP Morgan Plc, London; a consortium led by Credit Suisse First Boston
 (Europe), London; Morgan Stanley& Co.Limited, London; UBS Ltd, London,
in a
 tie-in with Balkan Consultancy Company, Sofia.

 Candidate consultants are required to have experience in successful
 privatisation deals for enterprises in the tobacco industry, mergers or
 acquisitions of companies in the same sector, as well as companies'
 restructuring. The consultant in the deal will be required to prepare the
 privatisation of Bulgartabac subsidiaries and draw up a strategy for their
 restructuring.

 Bulgartabac officially launched the contest for a consultant on the
sale of
 its subsidiaries in the middle of December last year. Leading investment
 banks can participate in the competition independently or form tie-ins
 together with international or Bulgarian legal and financial consultant
 companies. The new strategy for Bulgartabac privatisation, which the
 government okayed at the beginning of October, envisages the piecemeal sale
 of the cigarette production companies and tobacco processing subsidiaries.

 Bulgartabac includes twelve processing factories and nine cigarette
 factories. It also runs five cigarette factories in Russia and one each in
 Ukraine, Romania and former Yugoslavia. UK tobacco giant Imperial Tobacco
 Group, British-American Tobacco, together with Phillip Morris and Gallagher,
 already declared interest in the privatisation of Bulgartabac.