LIC33 Chairman Pierre Louvrier presents acquisitions of stakes in Vivacom, Dunarit, Avionams and other Bulgarian companies at a news conference in Sofia, 24 March 2015. Photo BGNES

Paris-based LIC33, a private capital investment company, has acquired 43% of Bulgaria’s telecommunication operator Vivacom (www.vivacom.bg) and about 91% each of ammunition plant Dunarit (http://www.dunarit.com) and military aircraft repair plant Avionams (http://www.avionams.com/en/home.html), it emerged on Tuesday.

The acquisition of those and other assets in Bulgaria, reportedly controlled by Bulgarian businessman Tsvetan Vasilev, was announced at a news conference in Sofia by LIC33 Chairman Pierre Louvrier.

Louvrier, a Belgian national, said he is a private equity investor, having specialized in distressed and special private equities for 15 years. He also worked in an advisory capacity with Arthur D. Little, Accenture and as an Associate Director with KPMG Corporate Finance in Moscow, according to the LIC33 website (http://lic33.com).

The acquired assets also include TV transmission network operator NURTS (nurts.bg), a broadcaster of free over-the-air digital signal, and First Digital (http://www.first-digital.bg), the DVB-T multiplex operator of the programmes of state-owned Bulgarian National Television.

Louvrier said the assets were acquired for the token price of EUR 1. The buyer has also committed to repaying outstanding debt of the companies it is acquiring stakes in.

The combined outstanding debt of those companies is estimated at about EUR 900 M and is owed to Bulgaria's collapsed Corporate Commercial Bank, or KTB, and other banks.

According to data from capital.bg, Tsvetan Vasilev, majority owner of KTB, owned a little more than 43% of Vivacom, the brand name of Bulgarian Telecommunication Company (BTC), as of January 2015. The London-based investment arm of Russia's VTB Bank, VTB Capital, owned about 33%, while company creditors held the balance.

Bulgaria’s central bank has cancelled the KTB’s banking licence and launched insolvency proceedings against the lender at Sofia City Court.