According to the daily Dnevnik's unofficial information, US fund Apollo and Russian Expobank are interested in buying the branch.

"The majority owner of Sberbank has informed us that individual subjects have shown interest in the purchase of the bank," the Slovenian branch of Sberbank Europe has explained.

It added that the process of sale would not affect their operations nor existing contracts with clients and business partners.

Dnevnik wrote today that two possible buyers were US's Apollo, which is in the process of acquisition the Slovenian state-owned NKBM bank, and Russia's Expobank, which is also interested in buying Gorenjska banka, a small Slovenian bank.

Apollo and Gorenjska banka are however allegedly also interested in acquiring Austria's Raiffeisen banka, which announced its withdrawal from Slovenia at the beginning of the year.

The alleged ambition of the US fund is to become the biggest bank in the country through acquisitions of private and state-owned banks, Dnevnik reported.

NKBM is currently Slovenia's second biggest bank with a market share of just over 9%, while the biggest is the state-owned NLB with 23% share.

Sberbank entered the Slovenian market at the start of 2012 by taking over the Austrian-owned Volksbank International. Last year, it also took over Probanka's portfolio of individual clients.

Its market share currently stands at 4.5%. In terms of total assets, it is the eighth biggest bank on the Slovenian market of 17 banks.

Sberbank Europe has branches in another nine countries of central and eastern Europe, including Austria, Germany, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia, Serbia and Ukraine.

As on 30 June, the total assets of the Slovenian branch stood at EUR 1.94bn, while its capital adequacy was 15.42%.

Sberbank operates a dozen banks in eight Slovenian towns.

The bank posted a EUR 25.3m profit before impairments last year, while profit before taxes and after impairments reached EUR 6.9m.

Sberbank Russia is the biggest bank in Russia, controlling around a third of the banking sector.