The latest talks with Sberbank's executives suggested that the Russian bank would keep its stake in the Agrokor food and retail conglomerate "for the next five years," Economy Minister Darko Horvat told reporters on Thursday, commenting on media reports that Sberbank was thinking of selling its share at the company.

Maxim Poletaev, adviser to the chairman of Sberbank’s management board, told Reuters on Wednesday that the bank had received bids for the purchase of its shares in the conglomerate, which is now emerging from a debt crisis.

Through a settlement deal reached in June, Sberbank should get a 39 percent stake in the company, in exchange for its €1.1 billion debt claim. The debt-for-equity plan is expected to be implemented in February or March 2019, after a Zagreb court in October dismissed a series of appeals filed by some of Agrokor’s many creditors. 

“After the New Year, we need to urgently find a re-financing model for the existing roll-up loan, because it is expensive and unsustainable in market terms. The sooner we find partners interested in re-financing, the easier it will be for Agrokor to implement the terms of the debt settlement plan,” Horvat told reporters before a cabinet meeting in the central Croatian city of Karlovac.

Responding to a reporter’s remark that a 10 percent interest rate would be paid on the roll-up loan as of January, Horvat said that Agrokor’s state-appointed emergency administrators and the Economy Ministry were investing efforts to find a financial institution willing to re-finance the loan.

The €1.06 billion roll-up loan, signed in June 2017 by the former state-appointed administrator Ante Ramljak with 33 lenders, allowed the company to continue doing business at the time. But the interest rates agreed might now be a burden to its restructuring.

“We are all aware that this model is rather expensive, but at the time of Agrokor’s debt settlement negotiations with its creditors this was the only option available,” Horvat added.

Horvat told reporters that the company’s emergency administrator Fabris Perusko was currently in London, meeting with several banks possibly willing to help re-finance the loan.

“I hope we will come up with a re-financing model by Christmas this year. But we will wait for the emergency administrator to present details of the plan,” Horvat said.

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