"Delta" still interested in "Mercator"

Eight banks, the owners of Slovenian "Mercator", invited potential investors to submit their bids for purchase of their share of 36% in that market chain. This was announced yesterday (December 22, 2009) by Slovenian press.

Non-binding bids will be collected prior to February 8th, while binding bids are expected at the end of April 2010. People in "Delta holding" say that they are interested in the takeover, but they also say that the clear positions of Slovenian Government, major stockholders and the managerial structure of "Mercator" need to exist in the sales procedure. If that does not happen, they will not participate in this procedure.

Jelena Krstović, the Manager of Corporate Communications in "Delta holding", reminds that this company has repeated several times in the last few years that it is interested in entering the ownership structure of "Mercator".

- Such expansion is compatible with the retail trade development, which is one of the important businesses of our company. In our opinion, such merger would lead to creation of a trade company that would be respectable not only on the territory of former SFRY, but also in whole Europe - says Krstović.

So far, the interest in "Mercator" has also been expressed by fund "Kapitalska družba" ("Kad"), which is, allegedly, interested in the share of 10%.