About 50 trade union activists gathered outside the Cabinet building in Ljubljana on Tuesday in protest at plans by the state banks to sell their stakes in the country's biggest retail chain Mercator to the Croatian food company Agrokor.
Protesters called on the government to take on an "active ownership role" in Mercator. They said that with 24,000 workers Mercator was the biggest employer in Slovenia and that the domestic food industry depended on it.
Protesters want the shareholders to obtain in negotiations 50,000 euros in additional bank guarantees for each worker in case of massive lay-offs after the takeover.
Last week, retail workers' unions threatened to boycott the services of the domestic banks willing to sell their shares in Mercator, and the state property management agency AUKN said that the sale of Mercator's shares would not be in the long-term interests of the banks.
At an international tender, Agrokor has submitted the best non-binding bid, offering 221 euros per share to the owners of 52 per cent of Mercator shares, including Nova Ljubljanska Banka (NLB) and Nova Kreditna Banka Maribor (NKMB), which are both in majority state ownership.
