Thomas Cook, one of Europe's biggest travel companies, said that it has not received an offer for the company and is not engaged in merger talks with anyone.

Investors are lining up for Thomas Cook in anticipation that Arcandor, which owns 52.8 per cent stake in Thomas Cook, will put the company for sale.

Arcandor filed for bankruptcy on Tuesday.

The company had sought 650 million euros ($930 million) of loan guarantees from the German government because about 600 million euros of its loans needed refinancing. However, the German government refused to help, because the company was in trouble before the economic crisis.

Arcandor's bankruptcy filing covers German retailer Karstadt and its mail-order businesses, but Thomas Cook is a separate operation and Arcandor said the travel company would "remain unaffected".

On Wednesday Karl-Gerhard Eick, chief executive of Arcandor, insisted that it had no immediate plans to hand over its controlling stake in Thomas Cook creditor banks.

Arcandor's insolvency has no impact on Thomas Cook's financial position or its operational performance, nor on its management and staff," Thomas Cook chief executive Manny Fontenla-Novoa said in a statement. "We remain as a completely independent and separate business."

Meanwhile, Metro, Germany's biggest retail group, wants to buy the assets of collapsed retailer Arcandor, BBC News reported today.

"We have a short and medium-term objective to create a large new ensemble," Metro boss Eckhard Cordes, BBC quoted Germany's ZDF television channel.

Cordes suggested the combination could be listed as a new company.

Metro would merge its Kaufhof chain of stores with Karstadt and retain about 160 of the combined 200 department stores, Cordes said.

The combined company could be sold after two years of restructuring via a stock market listing, a spokesperson told the Handelsblatt newspaper.

Metro had been in talks with Arcandor on a merger of their department stores before the bankruptcy.

Thomas Cook reported earnings before interest and tax of 365.9 million pounds on revenue of 8.81 billion pounds.

Arcandor, which employs about 70,000 people, became one of Europe's largest non-banking failures during the financial crisis.

Under the German law this type of insolvency gives a company's management three months to produce a restructuring plan that meets the approval of the court-appointed admin­istrator.