ZAGREB, June 10, 2020 – The financial advisory firm Lazard has presented a due diligence report on the INA oil company to the Council for INA, a final report is expected in about a month, and the first meeting with executives of the Hungarian oil group MOL is expected by the end of this month, Environment and Energy Minister Tomislav Coric said on Wednesday.
“The Council for INA today received the first preliminary report on due diligence from our consultant, Lazard. A final report is expected within a month. What follows is intense communication with the other party and in that context, we expect the first meeting with MOL by the end of the month,” Coric told reporters after a meeting of the Council for INA.
He said they were “pleased with the work done.” He did not reveal details of the report, saying that INA was listed on the stock exchange and that this “narrowed the government’s maneuvering space.”
The Council meeting was chaired by Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic, and Lazard’s representatives took part by video conference.
The Council for INA is a government advisory body established in January 2017 with the task of providing guidance and proposing measures and decisions for the preparation, implementation, and financing of the possible buyback of MOL’s stake in INA.
MOL is the single largest shareholder in INA with 49.1% of shares, while the Croatian government holds 44.8%. The remaining 6.1% is held by private and institutional shareholders.
Prime Minister Plenkovic said in late 2016 that the government had decided to regain control of INA by buying back MOL’s entire stake. The decision came after Croatia had lost an arbitration case it had initiated against MOL before the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law in Geneva.
The government selected the Anglo-French investment bank Lazard as a consultant in August 2019.
