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Vienna: Austrian industry group A-Tec's chief executive leaves for a trip to the UAE next week to look for potential investment partners. Mirko Kovats is in need of cash to finance future acquisitions, he said during a reception in Vienna on Tuesday.
Kovats will meet 30 to 40 investors during his trip to Abu Dhabi and Dubai as well as to Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, he said.
Analysts presume that the fund-raising trip is connected to A-tec's plan to acquire Serbian copper mine RTB Bor, which is set to be privatised by the Serbian government.
Kovats described RTB Bor's operation to be "extremely profitable". Immediately accessible copper reserves would sum up to two million tonnes worth $17 billion, Kovats said.
A-Tec originally agreed to pay $514 million for RTB Bor. But the credit squeeze coupled with political instability in Serbia, had hindered A-Tec to arrange finance for the purchase, A-Tec's spokeswoman Claudia Mueller-Stralz said. In a revised offer last week, A-Tec proposed to the Serbian Privatisation Agency to pay at least $380 million combined with a performance bond amounting to $60 million.
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