Following news in January that the Slovenian government had plans to sell Telekom Slovenije, it is now reported that investment fund Cinven and Deutsche Telekom will lodge rival bids this Monday (13 April), said Reuters.

Each bid will be around €110 ($117) per share, although Slovenian daily newspaper Dnevnik said the rival bidders would offer up to €115 euros per share for the majority state-owned operator.

None of the parties have commented on the matter yet.

In either case, the bid is below the operator’s current market price because Telekom Slovenije has been suffering from falling revenues and faces outstanding court cases for allegedly misusing its dominant position in the market.

“Any acquirer of the business would have to take those potential liabilities on as a risk and that risk would have to be baked into the offer price,” a source said.

In related news, the Slovenian parliament has ousted Defence Minister Janko Veber for asking the army’s secret service to analyse the security consequences of the sale.

Telekom Slovenije is the country’s leading mobile operator as well as fixed incumbent. It is worth an estimated $1 billion and has 1.15 million mobile connections with 52 per cent of market share at end Q1 2015, according to GSMA Intelligence figures. It is also the largest of 15 state-owned companies that were slated for privatisation in 2013. So far, three of them have been sold.

In January it was reported that the country hopes to use proceeds from the sales, estimated to be around €1.5 billion, to reduce public debt, which was around 81 per cent of GDP in 2014.

The sale of the operator had been on hold since early July when the previous government decided to suspend the process, pending the result of the 13 July elections.