According to unofficial information, Fotona was sold by US financial fund Gores Group to the Chinese-European financial fund Agic Capital for EUR 80m, which is more than four-fold of the price under which the company was privatised.

Fotona's sales revenues increased from EUR 23m in 2013 to around EUR 40m last year, while profitability increased by almost four-fold, the paper says.

A similar "cold shower" was the news that coatings maker Helios was sold at the end of last year by the Austrian owners Ring International to the Japanese multinational Kasai Paint for EUR 572m. Helios was sold by the state to the Austrians in 2013 for EUR 145m.

Although the state was forced to privatise companies, which probably resulted in a lower price, Slovenia cannot say that it had sold the state silverware in the past prudently. Only on rare occasion it took into account the prospects of traditional companies.

We can only hope that in the future sales of the state silverware will be carried out better, including the sales of the NLB bank and telco Telekom Slovenije, concludes the commentary.