ВЕСТНИК БАНКЕР

The Banker weekly has been published for thirteen years now. It has 48 full-colour pages, A3 size. It is printed Friday evening and is available on the newsstands from Saturday. It has some 3,300 subscribers in 2006. The hand sale of the paper is carried out by 20 distribution companies across the country. Surveys ordered by the newspaper and carried out by the Sova-Haris sociological agency in 2003 and Scala agency in 2005 show that the paper's regular readers are occupied in the field of medium-sized and large business, in the financial sphere, in corporate and government administration. About 20% of our regular readers work in the senior financial, corporate and public management. They are also the people with high income - there was an option in the questionnaire to report a monthly income above BGN1,000 and approximately 15% of the inquired chose it for an answer. About half of the readers are occupied with medium-level management or lower positions, but they still rank among the people whose monthly income varies between BGN500 and BGN900. The newspaper has subscribers even in small towns such as Madan, Malko Turnovo, Knezha, etc., which represent the small business. A significant part of the circulation in Sofia (some 1,000 - 1,200 copies) is sold by hand near universities, especially those with economic departments. The average age of people who read the Banker weekly regularly ranges from 30 to 55 years, the same surveys show. The Scala agency survey indicates that about 15% of the Banker's readers study in economic universities. The remaining 15% of those who read the paper are obviously representatives of various professional circles, as the sociological excerpt cannot identify them by this indicator. However, letters sent to the editorial e-mail and visits to the paper's website show that they are mainly people occupied with humanitarian professions - lawyers, doctors, teachers, etc. In September 2005, by order of the editorial office the Scala sociological agency conducted another research (by including a questionnaire with the respective questions in another type of research) of the paper's readers. The results showed that the Banker weekly is among the dynamically growing editions in this niche. Because of the specific excerpt (the omnibus was launched to study the political attitudes in regional towns) the results are quite curious. It turns out that 12.8% of the inquired have read and know the Banker weekly at least to some extent and almost 5.6% of them say they read it regularly. According to sociological experts, this part of the excerpt exceeds 35,000 people, which goes considerably beyond the paper circulation of the Banker. That can be explained with the Internet edition of the paper as well as with the fact that one copy is read by several people. The Internet edition of the Banker Weekly (www.banker.bg) enjoys great interest, too. The supplement of the paper dedicated to the rule of law and power, Paragraph 22 (§22), entranced the readers with its very first issue in the end of 2001. It definitely attracted the interest of those who barely knew the Banker before the supplement appeared - judges, prosecutors, investigators, senior police officers. The supplement is inserted in the whole circulation of the Banker weekly. It is issued in 8 full-colour pages, A3 size.