April 4 (SeeNews) - Croatia's Fortenova, the successor to the collapsed food-to-retail concern Agrokor, said on Monday it has become the sole owner of Slovenian retailer Mercator [LJE:MELR] after squeezing out minority shareholders in a 22.4 million euro deal ($25 million) deal.
Fortenova, Croatia's largest privately-owned company, acquired the remaining 621,251 shares of Mercator it did not own in a transaction held on Friday, it said in a statement.
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“With this last transaction we have completed the acquisition process that started back in 2014," Fabris Perusko, Fortenova Group’s chief executive officer said in a statement. "It was a long-lasting and challenging process, with lots of intermediate legal and financial steps that were all leading to one and the same goal – forming the leading regional grocery retail chain.”
Mercator is the leading grocery retailer in Slovenia, with significant market shares in Serbia and Montenegro. Fortenova's supermarket chain Konzum is the leading grocery retail chain in Croatia, whilst Konzum and Mercator have a significant combined market share in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
“The synergies available to Konzum and Mercator by working together as part of the region’s largest retail group are numerous, which provides leverage for further strengthening our leading positions on the markets,” Perusko said.
Mercator was part of the Agrokor group from 2014 until April 2019, when all Agrokor assets except Mercator were transferred to Fortenova under a settlement agreement with Agrokor's creditors. Agrokor, which used to employ some 60,000 people in the region, has been undergoing restructuring led by a court-appointed crisis manager under Croatia's special law on companies of systemic importance passed in April 2017 with the aim of shielding the country's economy from big corporate bankruptcies.
Croatian media reported last month, that Russia's Sberbank is in talks to sell its 44% stake in Fortenova to Hungarian asset manager Indoteks.
Mercator's shares last traded on the Lljubljana bourse on March 2, closing flat at 43 kuna.
($ = 0.910 euro)
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