May 3 (SeeNews) - Croatia's financial services supervisory agency, HANFA, suspended from trading eight companies within troubled food and retail concern Agrokor due to possible errors in Agorkor's financial statements, the companies said.
Until May 15, the shares of frozen food producer Ledo [ZSE:LEDO-R-A], food company Belje [ZSE:BLJE-R-A], meat processing company PIK-Vinkovci [ZSE:PIVK-R-A], news stand operator Tisak [ZSE:TISK-R-A], agricultural conglomerate Vupik [ZSE:VPIK-R-A], mayonnaise and margarine maker Zvijezda [ZSE:ZVZD-R-A], soft drinks and water bottling co Jamnica [ZSE:JMNC-R-A] and wholesaler Zitnjak [ZSE:ZTNJ-R-A], will not trade on the Zagreb bourse (ZSE), all eight companies said in separate bourse filings on Tuesday.
Trading in these companies was initially halted on April 27 by ZSE, after Agrokor reported its units will not publish their audited 2016 financial statements by the end of April due to possible irregularities. On the same day, the concern said it intends to name PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP as auditor of its 2016 financial statements after preliminary probes revealed that potential accounting errors might have been committed.
At the time, Agorkor's receiver also requested that certain companies within the group convene their general shareholders meetings within 15 days to decide on the appointment of PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP as the new statutory auditors.
On April 10, the government named Ante Ramljak as receiver of Agrokor to lead the restructuring process in Croatia's largest private concern under the extraordinary administration act adopted by parliament a week earlier. The law, commonly known as 'Lex Agrokor', was drafted by the government in response to financial troubles that emerged recently at the food and retail group.