Croatian tourism company Arena Hospitality Group, formerly Arenaturist, has received approval from the Croatian Financial Supervisory Agency (HANFA) to hold an IPO for up to €100mn worth of shares, according to a statement from HANFA.

The planned IPO is expected to be the largest since Croatia Telecom’s IPO nine years ago. It comes as major companies in other Southeast European countries are again eyeing stock market listings.

The bookbuilding for Arena will be held between May 15 and May 25. Arena has mandated InterCapital Securities, UniCredit Bank and Zagrebacka Banka for the offering.

Arena plans to use IPO revenues for regional expansion. Last year, London-based PPHE Hotel Group acquired a majority stake in Arena and announced plans for regional expansion.

PPHE later merged all its hotels in the CEE region, including eight Park Plaza hotels and one Art’otel in Germany and Hungary, under Arena. Arena has operating rights for the Park Plaza brand in 18 countries across the CEE region.

Arena currently operates 27 hotels in Croatia, Germany and Hungary with a total bed capacity of more than 10,000 rooms.

Elsewhere in Southeast Europe, shareholders of diversified telecom operator Digi Communications, the parent company of Romania's RCS & RDS, aim to obtain up to RON1.2bn (€264.9mn) from the sale of 21.7mn shares in the company. This would be Romania’s largest ever private sector IPO, and follows the listing of another major private sector company, Medlife, in 2016. 

Meanwhile, the Slovenian government is preparing for an IPO of the country’s largest bank Nova Ljubljanska Banka (NLB), which Ljubljana is required to sell by the end of this year under its commitments to the European Commission.