Tender announced for sale of Telekom Srbija - Deadline for bids is November 26

The Ministry of Finance of Serbia announced a tender today for the sale of 51% of shares of Telekom Srbija.

According to the ad published in daily paper Politika, the deadline for interested buyers to apply is November 26.

The condition to bid on the tender is that the potential buyer is a telecommunication company that has been providing telecommunication services for minimum five years before the announcement of the tender, with at least 20m fixed and mobile telephony and Internet subscribers at the end of 2009.

It is also necessary that the bidder's market capitalization, that is, the company's value, amounted to minimum 3 billion euros on September 30, 2010, as well as that it registered a consolidated revenue of over 4 billion euros and consolidated funds in amount of minimum 5 billion euros in the previous business year.

All consortiums led by a company with the share of minimum 51% in the consortium can bid on the tender if they meet the requirements.

Interested buyers also need to pay 10,000 euros to purchase the tender documentation, which will include all the details concerning the deadline and the way in which the bids for acquisition of Telekom Srbija should be submitted.

The Ministry of Finance will inform the interested buyers in written on whether they meet the tender requirements after privatization adviser Citigroup analyzes all the requests, while the qualified buyers will be receiving the tender documentation starting from November 1.

The Government of Serbia made the decision on October 14 to sell 51% of shares of Telekom Srbija, of which total value is estimated at 2.43 billion euros.

Serbian Minister of Telecommunications Jasna Matic said earlier that four big and serious buyers had expressed interest in Telekom - Telekom Austria, Orascom, France Telecom and Deutsche Telekom.

It has been announced that the Government will determine the minimum price for 51% of shares of Telekom Srbija, while Minister of Economy Mladjan Dinkic estimated that that price should not be lower than 1.4 billion euros.

Serbian Government owns 80% of Telekom's shares, while the remaining 20% are in the possession of Greek OTE, 30% of which are owned by Deutsche Telekom.

Telekom Srbija turned the profit of 13.3 billion dinars in 2009 and, thus, became the company with the biggest net profit in Serbian market.