The companies have offered to sell signalling assets as well as longer licensing agreements, and have already identified potential acquirers, said the people, who asked not to be named as the discussions aren’t public. Without the remedies, the deal was poised to be blocked by Europe’s antitrust regulator, Bloomberg News reported last week. The new ones may not be enough to save the troubled tie-up.

Spokesmen for Siemens, Alstom and the European Commission declined to comment.

Alstom shares jumped 6.1% in Paris to 36.37 euros, still significantly lower than the 42.70 euros considered fair value by Morgan Stanley “if the deal goes ahead.” Siemens rose 1.3% in Frankfurt.

The EU’s top competition official, Margrethe Vestager, has come under intense political pressure from France and Germany to allow the deal to go through, with the governments arguing in favour of the emergence of a European champion to take on competition from China. Executives and politicians mounted a fierce campaign this week to sway Vestager, who said she was still open to a new proposal, but that it would have to be “very blunt” — or sizeable.

The companies first offered up a concession package in December, and attempted to add sweeteners in subsequent conversations with the commission, people familiar with the matter have said, but were unable to sway the regulator then.

At issue for the regulator are high-speed trains, which both companies make, as well as the duration for licensing agreements. The commission had asked Siemens to give up licensing for a decade, though the companies were only willing to give five years, people familiar with the matter said last week.

Behind the scenes, Siemens was said to have also been looking at options for its business should the merger fail. Siemens Chief Executive Officer Joe Kaeser said this week in an interview he was still assuming it would be approved, but a listing of the unit’s shares would be among the possibilities should it fail.

The commission is set to make a decision Feb 6 or Feb 12 on the tie-up.

A collapse of the deal would be a setback for two historic European industrial manufacturers and former fierce rivals. Their plan, unveiled in September 2017, was to build a transportation giant out of Siemens’s mobility unit and Alstom, with the idea that the resulting entity, with combined sales of about 15 billion euros (US$17 billion), would be able to counter global competition, especially from China.