Outside bidders keen on Thyssenkrupp elevator assets, says RAG CFO

FRANKFURT/DUESSELDORF (Reuters) - A consortium that agreed to buy Thyssenkrupp's <TKAG.DE> elevator division for 17.2 billion euros ($19.25 billion) earlier this year is getting regular requests to sell parts of the business, one of the co-investors said.

"Currently this is not the aim of the consortium," said Juergen Rupp, finance chief of the RAG foundation that successfully bid for the unit along with private equity firms Advent and Cinven.

The deal has not closed yet, but Rupp said this was expected to happen in the near-term, in June or July. Thyssenkrupp has said that it expects the deal to close by the end of September at the latest.

Asked whether RAG, a foundation tasked with bearing the costs for the Germany's exit from hard coal mining, would be interested in additional assets Thyssenkrupp wants to sell, CEO Bernd Toenjes said RAG would look at it if they came to market.

He added, however, that any additional investments needed to be focused on returns and meet a certain threshold for RAG to invest. Thyssenkrupp recently put on the block most of its assets, including steel and shipbuilding.

($1 = 0.8934 euros)

(Reporting by Christoph Steitz and Matthias Inverardi; editing by Thomas Seythal and David Evans)