The retailer, which is owned by Croatian conglomerate Agrokor, could sell the shopping centres for around EUR 200m, the newspaper reported, citing an unofficial source.

Mercator launched the sale of some of its property holdings, among them 17 shopping centres in Slovenia, Croatia and Bosnia, at the end of 2017, according to Dnevnik.

In December, it signed a EUR 49m agreement to sell the shopping centre in Belgrade, Serbia.

Thus, Mercator wants to obtain funds to build a logistics and distribution centre in Ljubljana and to pay part of its loans.

The group's liabilities at the end of last year totalled EUR 882m, with its net financial debt decreasing by EUR 8.5m to EUR 828m.

Mercator chairman Tomislav Čizmić said in April the company hoped to raise some EUR 300m with the monetisation of real estate and sale of non-essential assets.

Dnevnik did not report how many shopping centres would be sold to Supernova, but added that the contract could be sealed in the coming days.

Supernova Invest has recently set up a new company in Slovenia, Supernova MC Lju, which Dnevnik assumes is related to the purchase of Mercator's shopping centres.

Together with its company M2, Supernova has built around a dozen shopping centres in Slovenia. The investment into its mall with 70 stores in Ljubljana's Rudnik borough topped EUR 50m.