BELGRADE: Serbia s privatization agency said 10 firms had expressed interest in the purchase of Mobtel, its first mobile phone company now renamed Mobi 63, at a starting price of 800 million euros ($1 billion). Bids came from Norway s Telenor, Deutsche Telekom, France Telecom, Mobilkom Austria, the mobile unit of Telekom Austria, Sweden s TeliaSonera and Tele2, Egypt s Orascom , Israel s Cellcom, Emirates-based Etisalat and Moscow-based OJSC Mobile. The sale of Mobi 63 will be the largest single telecoms deal in Serbia since 1997, when the government of former Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic sold a 49 percent stake in state-held telecoms monopoly Telekom Srbija to Greece s OTE and Italian operator STET for $1 billion. Advised by Rothschild & Cie, the government put the mobile operator, which has nearly 2 million clients, up for sale on April 28 and plans to shortlist qualified bidders by May 19. The deal should be sealed by the end of July. The transaction includes a renewable 10-year operating license, for which the government says it will accept no less than 320 million euros, which it hopes will equate to 20 percent of the sale price. Deutsche Telekom, Europe s biggest telecoms group by sales which is active in neighboring Macedonia, Montenegro and Croatia, said the expression of interest was just the first step. Deutsche Telekom has entered into the preliminary stages of this tender process, a company spokesman said. We will analyze it according to our corporate strategy of increasing value. Mobtel was set up in 1994 by Telekom Srbija and local tycoon Bogoljub Karic. It lost its license in December and is now run by the state-owned telecoms monopoly. Some 82 percent of the sale proceeds will go to the state and 18 percent to a group of Austrian investors who took over Karic s stake in 2005. The government had hoped to attract other industry heavyweights including Vodafone, Greece s OTE and Spain s Telefonica. Both Vodafone and OTE said earlier in the day they would not run for Mobi 63. OTE already holds a 20 percent stake in Telekom Srbija, Serbia s sole landline operator which also runs mobile unit MTS 064. Reuters
