Belgrade Airport May Call Tender for Privatisation Advisor by Year's End - Media

The advisor is to prepare the airport operator's privatisation procedure within a year, Tanjug quoted Nikola Tesla’s CEO, Bojan Kristo, as saying.

The company will be privatised through a public offering of shares, which suggests its restructuring, change in legal status, legislation amendments and a clear business development strategy, he added.

The airport serviced two million passengers between January 1 and September 15, 2008, up 10% from a year earlier and a record high result, local media reported earlier. This year it plans to beat its all-time high performance of 2.5 million travellers serviced in 2007 but no target number was available.

Nikola Tesla expects to quadruple its profit this year from 360 milllion dinars ($6.9 million/4.7 million euro) in 2007 thanks to job cuts and increased traffic.

The airport operator is among the six companies in which, according to new Serbian legislation, all Serbian citizens who have not taken part in the privatisation of state-owned companies up to now, are entitled to free shares once these companies are offered for sale. Under the law, 15 percent of the capital of each of those companies can be offered to citizens for free.

The other companies on the list are majority state-owned Telekom Srbija; the country's largest drug maker, Galenika; oil monopoly Naftna Industrija Srbije (NIS); power utility Elektroprivreda Srbije (EPS); and flag carrier JAT Airways.

(1 euro = 76.38 Serbian dinars)