As Poslovni Dnevnik writes, the corporate, but also very much political news of the week is certainly what many as referring to as the “rehabilitation” of former government minister Martina Dalic by appointing her to the position of President of the Management Board of Podravka.
Martina Dalic was the personal choice of Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic, and although the media speculated that some members of the Supervisory Board would oppose it, her appointment was unanimously confirmed by the Supervisory Board on Wednesday. Her term will last until February 2022, because until then the company should have been run by the recently deceased Marin Pucar, who passed away after a battle with an illness.
Although Podravka is two-thirds owned by private capital, pension funds hold almost 49 percent of the shares, and the state has only 24 percent, the company is under “strong pressure” from politics. This, without exception, applies to all policy options, and the “right” to management and staffing is laid from the local to the highest national level. After Pucar’s death at the beginning of January, the head of the Croatian Chamber of Commerce, Luka Burilovic, the director of Adris Cromaris, Goran Markulin, and a member of the Management Board of Podravka for Finance, Davor Doko, were all in the race for Podravka’s proverbial ”throne”.
“Personally, I’m glad that the proposal for my appointment was made by the largest individual shareholder of the Croatian Government, it means a lot to me,” said Martina Dalic after the Supervisory Board session. She added that one of the first steps she intends to take will be to get to know the associates and representatives of the workers, but that she is not yet thinking about the reconstruction of the company’s management.
Despite the ongoing coronavirus pandemic and the record decline experienced by the entire domestic economy, by the end of September, Podravka had achieved revenue growth of 3.3 billion kuna (+ 2.8 percen), while sales revenues in the food and pharmaceutical segment also grew. The annual results for 2020 will be announced on February the 26th.
To briefly recall, former Deputy Prime Minister Martina Dalic resigned back in May 2018 after the Borg affair revealed that she coordinated a group of individuals who wrote Lex Agrokor for the Croatian Government without contracts and official decisions, who were then charged for their consulting services to the now disgraced concern.
Martina Dalic still claims that she did nothing wrong in the Agrokor affair – and she even referred to the work she did regarding Agrokor as a ”great experience and reference”.
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