Nama, Ljubljana's oldest department store, has passed into the ownership of a German private equity fund after it completed the takeover of its owner, also called Nama.

Katera Beteiligungs-Verwaltungsgesellschaft P11, which is part of the German real estate fund KGAL, first bought 87.58% of Nama from the insurance companies Zavarovalnica Triglav and Generali in April.

It then went on to publish a takeover bid for the remaining shares, offering €25 apiece, as much as it paid to the two insurers. The offer values the whole company at roughly €23.85 million.

According to a notice published in the newspaper Delo on 27 June, Katera increased its stake by 12.16% to 99.73% in the takeover bid. Along with the companies it acts in concert with, Katera controls 99.89% of Nama.

Nama manages its own real estate, which comprises more than 25,000 square metres of premises in six locations, including Ljubljana's prime department store.

A shop window at the Nama department store. Photo: Tamino Petelinšek/STA

Nama was Slovenia's first self-service department store, started in 1946 by Narodni Magazin (national store), a state-owned retail chain in the former Yugoslavia.

It is located in a modernist building on Slovenska Road in the centre of Ljubljana that was built in 1939 for the Czech shoe company Bata, with an annexe attached to it built in 1965.

The company Nama used to operate several stores across Slovenia, but now its only remaining one is the department store in Ljubljana, only one of the two remaining in Ljubljana, aside from Maximarket.

In 2023, Nama generated €3.6 million in net sales revenue, which came almost entirely from rents. Like revenue, operating profit increased by 11% on the year before to €1.2 million.

Net profit, which includes a €480,000 impairment of the investment in the subsidiary Nama In, amounted to €472,000 or 32% more than in 2022, shows the company's official annual report for last year.