Croatia

Crisis-hit Croatian conglomerate Agrokor will not go bust, the country’s central bank governor insisted in an interview with GlobalMarkets as he said the debacle highlighted the risks of firms building up bad balance sheets.

Creditors of Agrokor have until June 9 to submit claims for repayment to the government-appointed bankruptcy commissioner Ante Ramljak, the company said on Monday.

Agrokor’s largest creditors, VTB Bank and Sberbank, have made provisions for losses on the loans they have provided to the struggling Croatian food company.

The Croatian financial services supervisory agency, Hanfa, has suspended trading in the shares of eight of Agrokor’s subsidiaries until it appoints a new auditor to look over its 2016 accounts.

Croatian oil company Industrija Nafte, INA, has managed to prolong a $300m revolving credit facility by a year despite the default of the country’s largest private company, Agrokor.

The Croatian government-appointed extraordinary commissioner for troubled supermarket group Agrokor called on group subsidiaries to convene general assemblies to appoint new auditors as it said that it found "potential errors” in the group's 2016 accounts.

AlixPartners, the restructuring adviser, has been chosen by the government’s appointed commissioner, Ante Ramljak, for the restructuring of the debt-ridden Croatian food company Agrokor, according to a statement from the company.

The Social Democratic Party of Croatia filed a motion in parliament on Thursday to depose the minister of finance, Zdravko Marić, alleging a conflict of interest with decisions related to the defaulting food company Agrokor, Croatia's largest private company.

Agrokor’s biggest creditor Sberbank has refused to be part of its additional funding, initially set for up to €150m, not long after it lost control of the restructuring.

The Croatian government has followed up on its new law, designed to handle Agrokor’s debt crisis, by appointing an “emergency management commissioner” and overriding plans for the restructuring drawn up by creditors.

Croatia’s parliament passed an emergency law on Thursday to deal with the default crisis at Agrokor, the sprawling food and agriculture group that is the country's largest private company.

Even as South Africa and Halkbank prove that idiosyncratic risks are ever present in in emerging market bonds, conditions remain beyond syndicate bankers wildest dreams. That is good news for the bulging pipeline.