July 5 (SeeNews) - Russia's Sberbank does not want to own a retail business in the long run but it will not sell its stake in Croatia's Agrokor until the food-to-retail concern is back on its feet, said Maxim Poletaev, a special advisor on Agrokor to Sberbank's president.
"To sell our share would be irresponsible. Agrokor is in a bad financial state and at this time it is important to carry out a recapitalisation and turn it from a story of failure into a success story," Poletaev said in an interview with the Croatian subsidiary of TV broadcaster RTL on Wednesday evening, after the concern's creditors upheld a settlement deal which will see Sberbank acquire a 39.2% stake in the concern.
Strategically, however, Sberbank does not want to be in the retail business in the next 5 to 7 years, Poletaev noted.
"Honestly, we did not want this. Our main task was to recover our money. We never wanted to become an owner in Agrokor," he said.
On Wednesday, Agrokor creditors holding 80.20% of total claims voted in favour of upholding the settlement deal, under which a new concern owned by the creditors will be established.
Along with Sberbank, Agrokor's new owners will be bond holders with a 24.9% stake, local financial institutions will own 15.3%, Russia's VTB bank 7.5%, while suppliers will hold 4.7%.
The High Commercial Court in Zagreb is now expected to validate the settlement, following which the implementation process is planned to last between three and four months.
Agrokor, which employs some 60,000 people in the region, has been undergoing restructuring led by a court-appointed crisis administrator under a special law on companies of systemic importance passed in April last year with the aim of shielding the country's economy from big corporate bankruptcies.