Ljubljana - After acquiring the hardware retailer Merkur Trgovina, Slovenia's largest private equity fund, Alfi, has also reached agreement to acquire a stake in the company running the store premises, according to a report by the newspaper Delo, which says the deal is unofficially valued at substantially more than EUR 10 million.

Delo writes online that Alfi agreed with the Bank Assets Management Company to acquire its 62% stake in Merkur Nepremičnine, which manages the premises of Merkur stores and owns some of the shopping centres.

Delo reports that the contract has not been signed yet and Alfi will also need to get regulatory approval for the transaction.

It says Alfi has also agreed to buy the bad bank's claims against the company amounting to EUR 13.07 million. Since the fund had been buying debt of Merkur Nepremičnine before, this will make it the sole financial creditor of Merkur Nepremičnine with about EUR 21 million in claims.

Apart from the bad bank, four other owners hold stakes in Merkur Nepremičnine, including three affiliated with Serbian businessman Miodrag Kostić. These are companies Monetic and TCK, owned by the Cyprus-based firm Ermaged, and the bank Gorenjska Banka, which is owned by the Serbian AIK Bank. They have a combined 35.6% stake in Merkur Nepremičnine.

Alfi finalised the acquisition of Merkur Trgovina in April. It bought the company from the US fund HPS Investment Partners for roughly EUR 50 million.

The two Merkur companies were incorporated in 2014 when the original Merkur went into receivership. The real estate arm manages all 23 stores and all logistics capacities of Merkur Trgovina. It also owns Merkur shopping centres in Ljubljana Vič borough, Primskovo near Kranj, Koper, part of the Merkur office building in Naklo, a minor warehouse in Slovenj Gradec and some smaller plots of land, writes Delo.