Russian retailer Magnit has denied press reports its plans to buy Agrokor’s retail operations in the Balkans, Reuters reports.
Slovenian daily Finance had previously reported, without mentioning sources, that the Croatian food-to-retail consortium would sell its retail operations Mercator (Slovenia), Konzum (Croatia) and Idea (Serbia) to the Russian company.
Magnit has an annual turnover of €17.5 billion and has over 14,000 stores in Russia.
New Business Model
Although Agrokor made no official comment on the speculation, the Croatian company had previously said it was working on a new business model to protect employees, suppliers and other partners.
Croatian daily Vecernji List reported that Russia’s Sberbank (which holds 52% of total debts) is prepared to provide additional financing to Agrokor, but the bank made clear it had no plans to take over the management of the company.
The accumulated debts of Agrokor amount to at least HRK 45 billion (around €6 billion), of which most are due for payment by the start of 2020.
© 2017 European Supermarket Magazine – your source for the latest retail news. Article by Branislav Pekic. Click subscribe to sign up to ESM: The European Supermarket Magazine
