Leading bankers, economists, and businessmen have founded the Bulgarian ‘Bank of the Year’ Association which will be organizing the country’s most prestigious banking awards.

The Bank of the Year Association has been set up 18 years after Bulgaria’s very first banking awards, and will be in charge of realizing the 13th annual “Bank of the Year” competition scheduled to take place at the beginning of July 2010 bringing together the business, financial, and political elite of the country.

The founding members of the Bulgarian Bank of the Year Association include Andrey Pramov, financial expert, and long time member of the Governing Board of the Bulgarian Stock Exchange; Silvia Peneva, partner at Deloitte Bulgaria; Stefan Nenov, partner at Moore Stephens Bulgaria – Audit Ltd; Ertan Kara, economic advisor of the Bulgarian President Georgi Parvanov; Nayden Nedyalkov, CEO of Allied Assets consultancy; Valentin Panayotov, creator of the Bank of the Year awards, owner of the trade mark, and publisher of the financial newspaper Pari Daily; Maxim Behar, PR specialist and CEO of the largest Bulgarian public relations company, M3 Communications Group, Inc.

Valentin Panayotov has been elected Chair of the Board of Directors of Bulgaria’s Bank of the Year Association.

The newly founded Association has also announced the commission which will determine the winners in the different categories of the 2009 Bank of the Year awards.

In addition to the members of the Board of Directors, the jury will include prominent financiers and managers such as Professor Valeri Dimitrov, head of the National Audit Office; Stamen Tasev, Executive Director of the Bulgarian Business Leaders Forum; Sasha Bezuhanova, co-founder and Vice-President of the Confederation of Employers and Industrialists in Bulgaria; Maria Georgieva, Director of the International Banking Institute of the Bulgarian National Bank; Vladimir Tashkov, CEO of the Burov Foundation; Vasil Velev, Chair of the Association of Industrial Capital.

Bulgaria’s 13th annual “Bank of the Year” Awards will be presented in the traditional categories: “Market Share”, “Efficiency”, “Dynamics”, “Client’s Bank”, “Foreign Bank Branch”. The top “Bank of the Year” prize will be handed by Bulgarian President Georgi Parvanov.

The newly-established Bank of the Year Association has created a working group of experts who will be collecting and systhematizing data from the official results of all banks in Bulgaria.

The information, which will be used to determine the winners, will be accessible to the public on the website of the Bulgarian National Bank.

The top prize “Bank of the Year” will be awarded to the bank which has the highest cumulative score in the following categories: “Market Share”, “Dynamics”, and “Efficiency”.

The “Foreign Bank Branch” category will include all banking institutions in Bulgaria with a status of a “bank branch” submitting their results to the BNB.

The “Client’s Bank” award will go to bank winning the largest number of customer votes submitted on the official website of contest www.bankoftheyear.bg.

Bulgaria’s first Bank of the Year Awards were set up back in 1992. Since then the big prize “Bank of the Year has been won by the following banks:

1991 – Bank for Agricultural Credit

1992 – Bank for Agricultural Credit

1993 – Bulgarian Post Bank

2000 – Bulbank

2002 – Raiffeisenbank Bulgaria

2003 – Raiffeisenbank Bulgaria

2004 – DSK Bank

2005 – United Bulgarian Bank and DSK Bank

2006 – PostBank

2007 – Raiffeisenbank Bulgaria

2008 – United Bulgarian Bank

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