BULGARIA Law and Practice Contributed by: Yordan Naydenov, Mihail Vishanin and Hristian Gueorguiev, Boyanov & Co.
Boyanov & Co. 82 Patriarch Evtimii Blvd. 1463 Sofia Bulgaria Tel: +359 2 805 50 55 Fax: +359 2 805 50 00 Email: mail@boyanov.com Web: www.boyanov.com
1. Trends 1.1 M&A Market
A newly emerging trend in the Bulgarian M&A mar - ket is acquisitions in the healthcare sector, which so far are a reserved territory for domestic buyers. The renewable energy sector remained active, especially with respect to acquisition of photovoltaic parks or project companies with ready-to-build status. The IT sector remained steady, with a number of small deals. There have been a few interesting transactions in real estate, mostly acquisitions of business and retail centres. One acquisition in the insurance sector was closed in 2025 – the full acquisition of United Health Insurance Fund Doverie (one of the leading players in the field of health insurance) by Generali CEE Hold - ing, which already owns and operates an insurance company in Bulgaria, Generali Insurance AD. During the same year, we also saw the initiation of the inte- gration process of the two insurance companies by way of transfer of the ongoing concern of Doverie to Generali Insurance, a pioneering approach used for the first time. Given the small size of the Bulgarian banking and insurance markets, transactions in those sectors are very rare. 1.2 Key Trends The expectations for 2026 are for a comparable number of small and medium-sized deals and for at least one megadeal – the sale of assets owned by the Russian energy corporation Lukoil consisting of four large companies, one of which is the oil refin - ery in Burgas, which is the only Bulgarian oil refinery. There was already an unfinished attempt at the sale of Lukoil in 2025 followed by the introduction of US sanctions against the parent Lukoil company, which make the potential sale of the Bulgarian companies strongly dependent on the political decisions of the US administration.
Two factors played significant roles in determining M&A and investment activities in Bulgaria in 2025. Firstly, the ongoing war in Ukraine continued to dam - age the investment climate in Bulgaria, keeping stra - tegic investors cautious towards Eastern Europe, and secondly, there was the internal political climate, with seven general elections in a period of three years, fol - lowed by parliaments that were not capable of form - ing stable governments. The last regular government, elected in January 2025, resigned in December 2025 after a series of vigorous political protests all over the country. Still, economic activity in the M&A sector remained steady, and the deals made throughout the year were comparable to the previous year’s volumes, amount - ing to circa 80 transactions (including some major business real estate deals), an achievement that is fairly standard for an economy the size of Bulgaria’s. However, compared with 2024, 2025 was marked by one megadeal (by Bulgarian standards, mean - ing a deal with a value exceeding EUR100 million), which was the acquisition of TBI Bank AD by the US Advent International private equity fund, which has committed to pay an acquisition price of EUR300 mil - lion. Overall, M&A activity in Bulgaria did not decline due to the global anti-inflation measures, despite the fears expressed in this direction, yet neither did we see a significant growth in either the number of M&A activities or their scale. As in previous years, the vast majority of corporate transfers were rather small in size, and outside of renewable energy and technology companies, most buyers were local.
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