As Italian financial fund Palladio Finanziaria withdrew from the sale talks in February due to the moody Croatia with damages claim to Cimos, the news spread not only in the Balkans, where Cimos has dozens of factories, but also far across Europe and overseas.

The government's back-up plan of saving Cimos in line with the private investor principle was but a "decoration in the failed sales procedure", Dnevnik says.

If the state was to restore Cimos's former glory it would have to invest dozens of millions of euros in the company.

According to the paper, Cimos's fate was determined by HTT, which helps create about half of Cimos's revenue. The US corporation, which also cooperates with Cimos's fellow car industry supplier TCH Cogeme, pressured the Italians into the purchase.

The Slovenian negotiators made no more mistakes in the talks and thus the state managed to save its face, the paper says in The State Saved Its Face in the End.

The paper says that the most mistakes had been made until mid-2016, when Finnish citizen Janne Harjunpää, former bad bank official, was in charge of the talks. He reportedly favoured Bosnian Nijaz Hastor, the owner of the failed Prevent Global group, as the buyer.

Many who would be interested in Cimos did not even know that it was on sale. When the head of the Slovenian Sovereign Holding (SSH) Lidia Glavina and bad bank head Imre Balogh took over, there was not much they could do, the paper says.