On Monday, one day before a court hearing in which the creditors of the Croatian retail and food conglomerate Agrokor will vote on a settlement deal for the company, Agrokor’s emergency manager Fabris Perusko commented on the situation in the company.
Agrokor, one of the largest companies in the country, employed some 60,000 workers across the region before its crisis started in early 2017.
The running of Agrokor was temporarily taken over by state-appointed administration in 2017 in order to save the company from bankruptcy. The debt-for-equity settlement plan between the company and its creditors, reached on June 19, needs to be approved by the Zagreb Commercial Court by July 10, when the administration’s legally mandated term is set to expire.
Perusko said that 67 percent of the creditors needed to vote at the hearing. He called on all the creditors to vote so that the settlement deal could be confirmed by July 10, adding that he believed the process would be over tomorrow.
There are over 5,500 creditors and over 12,000 claims in the case.
“The purpose of the deal is to finish the financial restructuring so that the company could have a healthy debt ratio which will be manageable in the future. The company, along with its subsidiaries, has shown that it can do business with profit, and manage the debts which will come after the restructuring,” Perusko said when asked whether he was worried about what would happen to Agrokor after the settlement deal is approved.
He said he wanted to improve corporate management in the group.
“The ways decisions were made in the past is one of the main reasons the company ended up where it was. Controlling wasn’t efficient either, so decisions could not have been made based on real data,” Perusko said.
He added that there was no need to fear layoffs, as there would be none.
“Since the economy is growing, we have labour shortages, both in Ledo (frozen food producer) and in Konzum (retail chain), so I see the possibility for growth, not layoffs,” he said.
Perusko said that, if the debt-for-equity settlement deal is approved, the crisis management would be active for some six months after – the appeals deadline is three months after the approval, and three additional months are planned for the implementation of the deal.
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