Andrey Kostin, the CEO of the Russian VTB bank, said on Thursday that after the debt-for equity settlement is reached with creditors of the indebted food and retail group Agrokor, the bank could end up owning around 10 percent stake at the Croatian company, news agency Bloomberg reported.

Kostin’s comment came in a news conference held in St. Petersburg. Should the announcement prove to be true, Russian banks VTB and Sberbank might jointly end up holding around 50 percent stake in the restructured Agrokor.

According to an earlier report by the Croatian daily Jutarnji List, Maxim Poletaev, the deputy chairman of the executive board of Russia’s Sberbank said on Tuesday in Zagreb that Sberbank would get 40 percent stake at Agrokor after the settlement deal.

Russian banks Sberbank and VTB are Agrokor’s two largest creditors, with claims of €1.1 billion and €300 million respectively, out of the company’s total debt of around €7.8 billion.

According to the special law passed in April 2017, the settlement deal agreed by the company’s state-appointed emergency administration and its creditors and suppliers must be reached by July 10 at the latest. The deal will include a debt-for-equity plan, with creditors with largest claims expected to get the largest stakes in the restructured Agrokor group.

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