Strabag SE CEO toys with delisting idea-paper

VIENNA Aug 27 (Reuters) - Strabag SE Chief Executive Hans Peter Haselsteiner floated in a newspaper interview the idea of taking the Austrian construction group private with other big shareholders if its stock price continues to swoon.

Haselsteiner, whose family has a 29.2 percent stake in the company, told the WirtschaftsBlatt paper he was disappointed with the stock's performance since a 2007 IPO. It started trading around 50 euros, and now trades around 17.50.

Asked if Strabag still needed a listing, he said: "We wouldn't need the bourse now, but maybe we will need it again sometime. The owners have not yet brought themselves to a delisting. It is all a matter of how much the price really falls because at some point it is no longer interesting."

While price drops could in theory make any stock more attractive, "there is also a price at which shareholders say we could delist. But we are not that far yet," he added in the interview posted on the paper's website on Monday.

Russian tycoon Oleg Deripaska in July raised his Strabag stake to 17.6 percent. Deripaska's Rasperia Trading Ltd is one of four core Strabag shareholders along with the Haselsteiner group, Raiffeisen NOe-Wien bank and insurer Uniqa.

The group, which a month ago warned it would miss its 2012 profit target, has a free float of just over 14 percent and holds 8.9 percent as treasury shares. (Reporting by Michael Shields; Editing by Helen Massy-Beresford)