The owners of the payment service Nets that runs NemID has received a bid of 16 billion kroner, according to a report in Financial Watch – four billion higher than was expected. In total, there are reportedly five bid on the table.

Parliamentary hearing to focus on Nets sale
Parliament will tomorrow hold a hearing to discuss the sale of Nets, which also takes care of Dankort and Net-ID payments, at which politicians across the aisle are expected to object to the possibility of the personal information of Danish citizens ending up in the hands of foreign authorities.

One of the biggest concerns has been the involvement of US companies in some of the bids, as the US Patriot Act permits the country's authorities access to a larger range of sensitive information than under Danish law

One of the bidders is a consortium of two American private equity funds together with ATP, while another is the American private equity fund Silverlake.

Multiple stakeholders
Nets is presently owned by a number of different companies. Nationalbanken owns 10 percent, and other stakeholders include Nordea, Danske Bank, Norwegian DnB and around 200 smaller banks in Denmark and Norway.

Financial Watch reports that the other bidders are: Tryghedsgruppen with the private equity fund Nordic Capital and a couple of Nordic pension funds; the private equity fund Permira together with a Canadian pension fund; and the French industrial buyer Atos.

Decision expected this week
The bids will now be evaluated by Nets’ board and a statement is expected to be issued later this week.