The company associated with Martens Management Group, a private Austrian conglomerate which is already active in Slovenia, said in the intent, valued at just shy of EUR 180m, that it would publish the takeover bid in 30 days at the latest, given satisfactory results of due diligence.

Anatol said it would 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.

Cinkarna has long been one of the most profitable Slovenian industrial companies and has had a generous dividend policy, with the boss of brokerage Ilirika Igor Štemberger saying at the time that the offer should have been twice as high for it to make sense to even start with negotiations.

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.

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