Although the struggling company managed to strike a liquidity deal in the summer, freezing its debt repayment until the end of the year, more will be needed to secure Merkur's long-term stability and for the EUR 20m third payment as part of the 2010 financial restructuring plan.

Since the start of the restructuring, Merkur has reduced its debt by some EUR 170m, but this still leaves the company with some EUR 300m in debt to banks, mostly stemming from the failed MBO of the former management.

Merkur already carried out a debt-to-stock conversion in late 2012, when 12 banks and other creditors converted EUR 39m of loans and the NLB bank wrote off EUR 25m.

The daily Dnevnik reported this week that banks had given Merkur a green light for preparing a proposal for a new EUR 180m debt conversion, indicating their realisation that minimum conversions will not save the Naklo-based hardware retailer from receivership.

According to Dnevnik's unofficial information, banks are further to take on some EUR 40m of Merkur's financial investments, land and empty facilities put up by the company as collateral, while leasing companies are to take on some EURm of the retailer's loss.

The company did not wish to confirm any details as the talks are ongoing, but the company told the STA it was operating in line with its plans this year and was keeping or even increasing its market share in key categories despite the crisis-based decline in purchasing power in Slovenia, felt strongly in particular in the sale of technical products.

Dnevnik meanwhile reports on Saturday that former Merkur chairman Bine Kordež, who is serving a six-year-and-five-month prison sentence for the EUR 9m defrauding of Merkur in a chain sale of a retail centre, was ordered by the Ljubljana District Court this week to return EUR 2.4m obtained illegally in this sale.

The court also put a freeze on all the real property owned by Kordež and his family.