Anatol will offer EUR 220 per share, or close to EUR 179m for the entire stake excluding treasury shares, but the company said the value to shareholders is EUR 246.52 together with the proposed EUR 26.52 dividend that is to be confirmed at Tuesday's AGM.

"This is a premium of 26.1% over the 12-month average stock price," Anatol said in a press release circulated by a Slovenian PR firm.

The stock closed at EUR 239 on the Ljubljana Stock Exchange on Friday but surged almost 7% in early trading on Monday to EUR 255.

"The offer is a unique opportunity for existing Cinkarna shareholders ... which is better than in past unsuccessful attempts. It is also a unique opportunity for the company to forge a strategic partnership with a new long-term shareholder," the press release reads.

Anatol plans to publish a takeover bid within 30 days but no sooner than in 10 days. It said KKR, the giant US private equity fund, will help with the financing.

Ralph Martens, the controlling shareholder of Martens Management Group, was quoted as saying that his firm has "a strong vision of the development of Cinkarna as an independent and leading company in Slovenia and in the broader region in this industry."

Cinkarna chairman Tomaž Benčina told the STA Anatol representatives had visited the company today. He would not comment on the price or whether this was a hostile takeover bid.

Martens Management Group already controls the Slovenian manufacturing firm Niko Železniki. One of its affiliates, Ring, had meanwhile bought and restructured coatings maker Helios in 2014 and sold it to Kansai Paint of Japan in 2016.

Cinkarna made EUR 13m in net profit in the first quarter of 2018, up 86%, on EUR 52.5m in sales revenues, an increase of 17% over the year before.

It has long been one of the most profitable Slovenian industrial companies and has had a generous dividend policy; in 2017, its dividend yield was almost 5%.

The shareholder structure is very dispersed but the state holds a significant stake in the company through pension insurance Modra Zavarovalnica (15% as of the end of 2017), the Bank Assets Management Company (14.5%), and the Slovenian Sovereign Holding (11.4%).

Cinkarna has been designated for privatisation since 2013 and several attempts at selling a majority stake have been undertaken, most recently in 2015, when a 70% stake was put up for sale.

But the sale was aborted because the price was affected by environmental concerns stemming from pollution of the Cinkarna site with heavy metals.

The company has almost EUR 25m set aside in reserves for ecological remediation, according to the annual report for 2017.