The Russian lender Sberbank, a key shareholder in Croatian food and retail company Agrokor, plans to sell its stake in the first half of this year, Interfax quoted a Sberbank executive as saying on Thursday, according to Reuters.

The executive Alexander Vedjakin said on the margins of the Davos summit meeting that Sberbank was planning to sell its 39.2 percent stake in Agrokor, the Kommersant newspaper said citing the Reuters news agency.

An aide to Sberbank’s CEO, Maxin Poletayev, told Reuters last month that Sberbank had started to receive interest from potential buyers for its shares in the conglomerate which is emerging from a debt crisis.

In October, a Croatian court approved a deal for Agrokor that included a debt-for-equity swap. This made Agrokor’s biggest single creditor, Sberbank, its largest shareholder, Reuters recalls.

The debt-for-equity deal at Agrokor – currently controlled by state administrators – is expected to be cleared by Croatian courts and finalised by March this year.

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