Austrians to arrive on time for negotiations - possible purchase of State-owned part of Mobtel ?

Company BK Trade, the owner of 51% of mobile telephony operator Mobtel 063, was sold to Schlaf group from Austria. That was confirmed by Tibor Kartik, consultant in Austrian company Mobilkom which is interested in purchase of 100% of capital of Mobtel.

Mobtel's primary goal now is to buy remaining part of Mobtel from the Government of Serbia. The negotiations are expected to begin today, on May 13, but that has not been confirmed yet. Besides Schlaf, the delegation made of representatives of TA, consortium of private investors, among which is Austrian vice chancellor Jozef Taus, as well as vice chancellor Hubert Gorbah, will come to Belgrade. They intend to negotiate with Serbian Government on take-over of remaining part of Mobtel.

If Mobilkom Austria purchase Government's part of Mobtel, Serbia will join the company of countries who have mobile telephony operators that are 100% private property.

Mobilkom Austria already has 100% ownership over operators VIPNET in Croatia and SIMOBIL in Slovenia. Slovenian operator Vega070 is also completely private company and its owner is American Western Wireless International. Greek company OTE is the owner of 100% of stocks of Romanian operator Kosmofon, whereas Vodafon is present as operator in Albania and Hungary. The other Hungarian operator in private ownership is Westel900, which is managed by German company T-mobil.

If Mobilkom managed to agree with Serbia on procurement of remaining part of Mobtel, there are two options: either to purchase majority share from Austrian businessmen, as it was done in Bulgaria, or to join them, which is not excluded. Experts from Vienna estimates that the value of Mobtel is between €800 million and €1 billion.

Take-over of Mobtel could be the most important investment of one Austrian company in Serbia.