Five Croatian Institutional Investors Say Will Accept MOL's Offer for INA's Shares

Investment fund managers AZ, PBZ-CO, Erste Invest and PBZ Invest, and brokerage house Auctor agreed at a meeting on Tuesday that in the last three weeks market conditions have siginificantly worsened, as a crisis emerged on global financial markets, significantly reducing the value of corporations and leading to collapse of big financial institutions, the five companies said in a joint statemement.

Uncertainity deepened after the U.S. lawmakers rejected a $700 billion rescue plan for the financial industry on Monday, they added.

"With regard to these events and the situation on global financial markets, every one of the mentioned institutional investors will decide on its own to that extent it will accept the MOL's public bid for INA's shares," the investors said.

They reiterated that the price offered by MOL for INA's share, 2,800 kuna ($565.5/393.8 euro), did not represent the fundamental value of the company stock. MOL targets INA's 30.16% free float in its bid that expires on Friday.

The same investors said at the beginning of the monith that MOL's bid was inaproppriate.

INA's shares closed at 2,740 kuna on Tuesday in Zagreb, down 1.15%, on bearish market.

(1 euro = 7.1095 Croatian kuna)