JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - South African industrial group Barloworld said several parties had expressed interest in its Scandinavian car rental business, which it is trying to sell. Barloworld said late last year that it was selling the loss-making business and hopes to complete the transaction by September this year, although some investors doubt they will find a buyer by then. "Several (parties) have expressed an interest in receiving further information relating to the business and have signed non-disclosure agreements," Barloworld spokesman, Sibani Mngomezulu, said in an email responding to Reuters questions. Mngomezulu said the company had appointed a team of advisors to work on selling the business, declining to comment on how much it expected to raise from the transaction. One analyst estimated the unit could fetch up to 1 billion rand but another said Barloworld could struggle to find buyers and might even "give it away" to cut the costs of running an underperforming division. "I don't think it's worth much, it has been doing badly. Companies at this stage don't want anything bad on the balance sheet...they are pretty desperate to sell, they could throw it away," one Cape Town-based analyst said. Avis Scandinavia, which operates Avis and Budget short-term car rental from more than 350 centres in Denmark, Norway and Sweden, has more than 17,000 rental fleet cars, of which the majority are bought with guaranteed buy-backs. "It's a strong franchise name out there, they could get 1 billion rand or somewhere around there, but its difficult to say if they would be able to find buyers by September," another analyst said. | 
