Supermarket group Ahold is rumoured to be one of the bidders for the Hema department store chain, the Financieele Dagblad reports on Friday.

Today is the deadline for initial offers and seller Lion Capital can expect five or six groups to put in a bid, the paper says.
But a number of other potential buyers have pulled out because of the price, the paper says, quoting market sources. They suggest Lion wants €1.5bn for Hema, or 11 times its etitda earnings.
Both sources close to the talks and market analysts suggest Ahold would be a good fit for Hema, which has 530 outlets, mostly in the Netherlands.
Lion Capital put the company, which it bought from Maxeda in 2007, up for sale six weeks ago.