United Media, the media division of United Group, plans to expand to the Slovenian market this year by setting up a news portal under the N1 brand, which is already active in the region, sloveniantimes.com reports.

The Luxembourg-based United Media has already opened the Adria News subsidiary in Ljubljana under which the N1 Slovenija web portal will operate. The portal is to be launched in the first half of this year. According to unofficial information obtained by the newspaper Finance it will kick off in spring.

N1 has established itself as a trust-worthy and independent media platform as well as number one pick by consumers in all the markets where it is present and N1 Slovenija aims to do the same in the Slovenian market by meeting the highest journalism standards, said United Media managing director Aleksandra Subotić in a press release issued on Wednesday.

Katja Šeruga has been appointed Adria News director as well as the portal’s editor-in-chief. She previously worked as a journalist at public broadcaster RTV Slovenija and commercial broadcaster POP TV. She was also the newspaper Večer’s editor-in-chief and editor of the commercial broadcaster Kanal A news program Svet.

The portal will seek to boost and elevate journalism in Slovenia, she said today. N1 Slovenija will cooperate with N1 international editorial department that features among others former BBC World Service director Peter Horrocks and ENEX managing director Adrian Wells.

United Media is not planning on setting up the N1 TV channel platform in Slovenia for now, Finance reported yesterday.

United Group, whose majority share was acquired by British fund BC Partners in 2019, already owns telecommunications provider Telemach, online shopping portal Shoppster and sports channels Sport Klub in Slovenia.

Some 25% stake has been reportedly retained by Serbian businessman Dragan Šolak, the founder of United Group. N1 news channels are currently present in Serbia, Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina. N1 is the leading news media platform and CNN’s partner in the region, reads the press release.

Meanwhile, Finance reported that five groups are interested in the takeover of telecoms incumbent Telekom Slovenije’s subsidiary TSmedia based on unofficial sources – one of Šolak’s companies, Austrian publishing group Styria, one of businessman Martin Odlazek’s groups, Hungarian TV2 and publishing company Adria Media.

Telekom Slovenije published a call for expressions of interest in a 100% stake in TSmedia in November last year. The subsidiary’s portfolio includes the news portal Siol.net, the search engine and web portal Najdi.si and the business news and assistance portal Bizi.si.

The state-owned telco would prefer to sell the entire stake but is also willing to consider selling TSmedia’s assets individually.