Creditors Reach Settlement with Croatia's Troubled Agrokor

The temporary council of creditors of ailing food and retail conglomerate Agrokor unanimously voted on Tuesday to agree the text of a settlement under which Croatia's biggest domestic company will be taken over by its creditors.

The state-appointed emergency administrator at Agrokor, Fabris Perusko, met Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic earlier on Tuesday along with the members of the creditors' council and Agrokor's suppliers.

"We've been working on a settlement for the last several months, we finalised the details over the last few weeks, we've harmonised everything with a large share of creditors who are important for the voting process, and we have verified everything with legal teams, so I do not expect any major problems," Perusko said, according to N1 television.

Plenkovic described the settlement as "great news".

"This sends an important message of trust in the competence of the Croatian institutions, the government, parliament, courts, in the face of one of the biggest restructuring processes in Europe," Plenkovic said, according to SeeNews.

However, the settlement still has to be formally cleared by the Merchandise Court in Zagreb.

The key people involved in the agreement have not yet revealed any details of the settlement, which should define the level of write-offs of creditors' claims, as well as the new ownership and corporate structure of the new Agrokor.

Media have been speculating that Russian banks Sberbank and VTB bank will jointly have a 47 per cent stake in the new Agrokor.

American hedge fund Knighthead Capital will get 12 per cent, Croatian banks another 12 per cent, bondholders 25 per cent,and suppliers four per cent, according to the speculation.

The company's financial problems became...