Five companies reportedly made preliminary bids on Tuesday for a stake in South Korea's second largest carrier, Asiana Airlines.<br />Market sources say the leading bids for a 31-percent stake in the airline come from cosmetics firm Aekyung, Korea's largest brokerage consortium Mirae Asset Daewoo, and local activist fund Korea Corporate Governance Improvement.<br />Among those three, Aekyung is the only one with experience in the airline business owning Korea's largest budget carrier, Jeju Air.<br />Industry observers estimate the price of the deal to be roughly 1.6 billion dollars.<br />The airline's number one shareholder Kumho Industrial plans to complete the sale by the end of this year.<br />
