Czechs Push Tele Danmark to up Radiokom Bid

The Czech Finance Ministry will propose exclusive talks with a Tele Danmark consortium interested in buying a majority stake in Ceske Radiokomunikace.The consortium had showed interest in further negotiations with the government, while the second bidder, U.S. venture fund CEETV, had rejected further talks. Finance Ministry spokesman Libor Vacek said the consortium of Tele Danmark and Deutsche Bank had made a "very low" bid for majority state-owned Radiokom, a telecoms company which specializes in radio and television broadcasting. Vacek would not specify the price offered by the Tele Danmark group but according government source current bid amounts 861 crowns per share, or 13.5 billion crowns ($351 million) for the 51 percent state stake. The offer, the group's second, is significantly more than the 600 crowns per share that sources close to the privatization process had signalled in the initial bid two weeks ago but falls far short of the 30 billion crowns the government had hoped to raise from the sell-off. An extremely low price for the Radiokom stake could jeopardize plans to fund a widening public sector deficit with selloff proceeds.