The regional state authorities of North Rhine-Westphalia are considering a bid to rescue insolvent mobile phone maker BenQ Mobile, at least until a long-term investor can be found, the daily Die Welt reported in its online edition Friday.

"We'll do everything that is feasible within subsidy rules to bring the situation forward," the online edition of the Die Welt newspaper quoted a spokesman for North Rhine-Westphalia's economics minister Christa Thoben as saying.

The regional state government was considering issuing a guarantee for BenQ Mobile, the failed German arm of Taiwanese electronics maker BenQ, Die Welt said.

Such a state guarantee could be a necessary pre-condition for a sale of BenQ Mobile, a former Siemens subsidiary, to a group of German and US investors that has expressed interest in buying the company, the newspaper continued.

The court-appointed administrator in charge of the insolvency proceedings at BenQ Mobile, Martin Prager, said earlier this week that no buyer had been found for the company, despite expressions of interest by a large number of different parties.

But a Munich-based lawyer for an unnamed group of German and US investors hit out at Prager's comments on Thursday, insisting that his clients had submitted a firm offer.

Die Welt said the lawyer, Andreas Kloyer, had accused Prager of blocking tactics.

"We can't imagine the reasons why the insolvency administrator is ignoring our client's offer," the newspaper quoted Kloyer as saying in a letter.

The offer included a concrete price and detailed information about a number of points that still had to be clarified, the report said.

But Die Welt quoted Prager as saying that "there is no offer on the table that is ready to be signed."

His spokeswoman contended that the lawyer was simply trying to secure more advantageous conditions.

However, the two sides were still too far apart to be close to an agreement and the investor group was demanding conditions over which Prager had no influence over.

AFP