Coppola Comment

Bulgaria's Corporate Commercial Bank. Again. Oh dear. There is some good news: The Bulgaria National Bank (BNB) has now – belatedly – revoked the banking license of the failed Corporate Commercial Bank (KTB) and commenced bankruptcy proceedings. This will come as a huge relief to insured depositors, who will get their money back in time for Christmas. It also means that the attempt by a consortium of investors to rescue the bank has failed. But what a mess has been left behind: The BNB’s disclosures about KTB reveal the desperate measures that were taken to preserve the illusion of solvency in the months before its failure. This statement from the BNB’s website explains how the bank self-funded its own Tier2 capital with a complex web of circular lending transactions involving an investment company called TC-IME and a host of smaller intermediary companies. The ownership of the components of this tangled web requires some explanation. Indeed it does. Read

The latest in the Bulgarian bank saga. The audit report on Corporate Commercial Bank is out. It's very grim reading, but does that mean the bank will be closed down? Not necessarily..... Find out more here . (Forbes)

Another in the Bulgarian banking series at Forbes. Two months on, CorpBank is still closed and there is no end in sight. Depositors are angry, bondholders are nervous after the bank's recent default, and the Bulgarian authorities are making increasingly desperate attempts to find the money to reimburse depositors and - perhaps - recapitalize the bank so it can be reopened. Meanwhile, Tsvetan Vassilev, the bank's majority owner, is in hiding after an international arrest warrant for him was issued on charges of embezzlement. And Delyan Peevski's power base becomes ever larger.... Read the article here . Depositors protesting about CorpBank's closure. Picture credit: Novinite

Especially when it is disguised. My latest post at Forbes takes a jaundiced look at who is in the race to acquire Hypo Alpe Adria's network of Balkan banks. I'm not usually much of a conspiracy theorist, but this is the Balkans, after all - the far-fetched is mundane in that part of the world. There is something very shady going on, and I reckon the Russians are behind it. Read about it here . Oh, and in case the Balkans look like a black hole to you, here's a map (courtesy of Wikipedia).

No, not a film. Or a book. And as far as I know there are no Starks. Or dragons. But otherwise, the saga of the Bulgarian oligarchs and their political machinations is remarkably similar to "Game of Thrones". Politicians are the puppets of oligarchs, oligarchs are controlled by mobsters, banks are pawns in the game, and the people of Bulgaria pay through economic stagnation and entrenched poverty. All three posts in the saga (so far) are linked here. What on Earth is Going On in Bulgaria? The Curious Case of the Bulgarian Bank Runs The Bulgarian Game of Thrones Bank run on First Investment Bank, Bulgaria. (Photo credit: BBC)

At Forbes: Things move quickly in Bulgaria. Less than a month ago,  the IMF gave  Bulgaria's banking system a clean bill of health, saying it was "stable and liquid, with banks' non-performing loans buffered by provisions and significant capital, as well as a positive net foreign asset position".   But yesterday, the President of Bulgaria was forced to  issue a statement  reassuring people that their money was safe after a week of bank runs. And the EU has now granted Bulgaria an  emergency line of credit  to support its banking system. So what on earth went wrong? Find out here .