Mercator

Ljubljana – Dnevnik reports on Tuesday that after the Slovenian retailer Mercator had been transformed from a joint stock company into a limited liability company at the beginning of the month, the procedure has been launched in the region to merge certain business functions of Mercator and the Croatian retail chain of Konzum.

Ljubljana – Ljubljana Mayor Zoran Janković entered a not guilty plea at an arraignment hearing at the Ljubljana District Court on Friday in a case of tax evasion concerning the sale of retailer Mercator shares in 2006. His two sons also pleaded not guilty as well but they did not attend the hearing.

Ljubljana – Retail group Mercator posted a net profit of EUR 10.6 million in the first half of the year after reporting a loss of EUR 69 million in the same period a year ago due to property revaluation and writedowns. Sales revenue was down 0.4% to EUR 1.1 billion.

Ljubljana – Fortenova, a group based in Croatia’s Zagreb, published on Wednesday a takeover bid for the remaining 724,764 shares of Slovenian retail group Mercator it does not already own. It is offering to pay EUR 36 per share in cash.

The bid is open for 29 days, that is until 23 June, unless it is extended, the group said in the Slovenian newspaper Delo on Wednesday.

Belgrade – Serbia’s competition protection authority has cleared the transfer of Slovenian retailer Mercator to Croatian group Fortenova, thus clearing yet another hurdle for the step that follows the bankruptcy of Fortenova’s predecessor Agrokor. Fortenova expects the transfer to be completed at the end of the month.

Thousands of jobs in Bosnia, where unemployment is already high, may be in jeopardy owing to continued uncertainly over the future of Croatian biggest private company, Agrokor, which is stuggling with debt and liquidity issues.

Agrokor, which employs 40,000 people in Croatia and an additional 20,000 in Bosnia and Serbia, suffered two fresh blows on Friday, causing another drop in the value of its bond prices.

One of Croatia's biggest companies, Agrokor, a specialist in food production and sales, is launching a regional online shopping network towards the end of 2015 or at beginning of 2016.

Functioning along the lines of the well-known Chinese sales online platform Alibaba, A007 will start first in Croatia and then spread to the rest of the region.

Agrokor is to buy a 53.1 percent stake in the Slovenian food retailer Mercator for a price of 86 euro per share, media reported on Thursday.

From the money paid by Agrokor, shareholders will receive 325 million euro, Mercator subcontract suppliers 20 million euro, while the rest will go directly to the Slovenian company, which to finance its bank loans.