The Hungarian real estate investment firm Indotek Group has reportedly been given approval by Brotish regulators to acquire a 43-percent stake in Fortenova Group, state agency Hina reported on Friday, citing an article published in the Vecernji List daily, which quoted an unnamed source "from Hungary."

Indotek is owned by Hungarian businessman Daniel Jellinek. The Zagreb-based Fortenova is a successor to the collapsed Agrokor food and retail company, once the largest private-owned company in Croatia which went into state administration and eventually reached an agreement with creditors in a vast debt-for-equity plan.

The 43-percent stake in Fortenova is currently held by Sberbank, a Russian lender which is currently under international sanctions. According to Hina which cited vecernji List daily, Indotek is “close to receiving official consent from the regulators in the UK who are responsible for such transactions as Fortenova Group is registered in Amsterdam and operates under British law.”

“Indotek-Investments signed a deal to buy Sberbank’s 43-percent stake in Fortenova Grupa, pending regulatory approval, a spokesman for the fund said by phone. He declined to disclose the price of the sale,” Hina cited Bloomberg as saying earlier this month.

“Some analysts speculate that the transaction will be worth €500 million,” Hina added.

Sberbank’s stake in Fortenova is worth reportedly €1.1 billion, equivalent to the loan that the bank gave to Agrokor before its collapse.

However, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the ensuing sanctions have prompted Sberbank to “temporarily withdraw from Fortenova’s ownership structure, which is why the Russian have lost half of what they invested,” Hina cited Vecernji List as saying, without clarifying any further.