ZAGREB, March 15, 2018 – The signing of an agreement between the lender Sberbank and the debt-laden Agrokor Group can be expected next week, according to a statement made by Agrokor emergency administrator Fabris Peruško after he held a meeting with suppliers in Zagreb on Thursday.
Asked by the press if there was any headway in the negotiations with Sberbank, Peruško answered in the affirmative. He said that in principle an agreement had been achieved, and that the signing of the deal could be expected next week. The Russian commercial lender is the biggest creditor of the retail and food group Agrokor.
Commenting on the process of reaching a settlement with creditors and suppliers, Peruško said that Agrokor’s suppliers were very important. “Within this process (of the emergency administration) during the time span of a year, the suppliers have been the only creditors since the start of the process who have been paid and it is essential to care for suppliers in the proper manner so they can continue operating within the system,” Peruško said.
During today’s meeting, representatives of the suppliers were informed about the ongoing process of emergency administration and about the outcome of last week’s negotiations with the interim creditors’ council and the emergency administration in Zadar.
One of the representatives of the suppliers, Marica Vidaković, hinted at a possibility of hammering out an agreement as a result of the negotiations.
The estimated value of the companies in the Agrokor Group that is available for their creditors ranges from 1.8 billion euro to 3.8 billion euro, according to a document published by the emergency administration in the indebted food retail group on Wednesday.
Agrokor published two documents: the “Entity Priority Model (EPM) Guidebook” and the “Summary Information Package as per Interim Creditors’ Council Disclosure Policy”.
The purpose of the EPM is to determine stakeholder claims and respective recoveries at each entity in the Agrokor group under emergency administration proceedings. The EPM identifies each entity’s distributable value and the legal rights, ranking and characteristics of each of its claims and the EPM Guidebook explains the settings of this model.
The Summary constitutes the basis on which the EPM is built and will allow informing the stakeholders of the forthcoming discussions around value allocation. Much of the information is preliminary and subject to material change as settlement plan discussions with the creditors’ representatives continue.
This material, for the first time, showcases the Estimated Valuation Summary of Agrokor companies. The estimated value available for the creditors of these companies amounts to 1.8-3.8 billion euro.
