Croatia's Agrokor Must 'Resolve Complex Issues at Once'

Croatia's biggest private company, Agrokor, which is experiencing serious financial problems, needs to address its complex problems "all at once", the head researcher of the global fixed income specialist Debtwire told BIRN.

Debtwire published its latest report on Agrokor on Friday. It published its previous report on the company in February.

Nick Smith-Saville, head of the European research at Debtwire, told BIRN that Agrokor's problems are complex.

He explained that the maturity of 485 million euros of "payment in kind", PIK, loans, due in June 2018 - a problem highlighted by many experts - could cause serious problems for company's capital structure. However, he emphasised that "it is only one issue".

Another is Agrokor's "draining the liquidity out of the system", which he called more of a short-term problem.

"You have several interconnected problems and unless you deal with them all at once you could worsen one or cause another," he said.

Media reports have said that some of the company's biggest creditors and suppliers are mulling taking over parts of management or ownership of the group - among them the biggest creditor, Russian state-owned Sberbank, which reportedly loaned the company another 300 million euros recently to cover short-term financial obligations.

However, Maxim Poletaev, vice-chair of Sberbank's management board, told Bloomberg on Saturday that its "plan is not to take over" Agrokor but to take part in the restructuring of the company, by selling off parts "which aren't important for company's core business".

Although the sale of subsidiaries is "technically possible", Smith-Saville sees a problem here in Agrokor being "highly levered".

He said that the "first question I would have...