The Constitutional Court Aspirin is Against Judge Kolakušić

Judge Mislav Kolakušić of the Commercial Court in Zagreb has caused a lot of headaches for everyone with his decision to suspend the pre-bankruptcy settlement proceedings of Dalekovod. Besides that company, which had potential with a recapitalization offer, Kolakušić has also slowed down the operations of the Commercial Court in Zagreb, and we believe in other commercial courts across the country as well. This has jeopardized other pre-bankruptcy settlements.

Dalekovod received a binding offer in May from the company Konsolidator, owned by Nexus Private Equity Partners, for managing open investment funds of venture capital with a private recapitalization offer worth 150 million kuna. The offer was conditional on the finality of the Commercial Court’s decision approving the concluded pre-bankruptcy settlement and the decision of the General Assembly on increasing the share capital of Dalekovod.

Extending Deadlines The deadline for response was July 15, so the company’s management requested from Konsolidator an extension until July 31, until the General Assembly of Dalekovod is held, and in mid-July, they requested a new deadline until August 31. The last extension, they explain, was due to the time lag in the pre-bankruptcy settlement process.
Both times, Konsolidator accepted the request, and then Judge Kolakušić intervened and suspended the pre-bankruptcy settlement proceedings for a constitutional review of the pre-bankruptcy law.
The Constitutional Court rejected Kolakušić’s request on Tuesday, but now the question is what has happened to Dalekovod in the meantime. Have some creditors perhaps changed their opinion that prevailed while the proceedings were ongoing, how has this affected the already problematic operations of Dalekovod, and will Konsolidator perhaps withdraw from the binding offer because of this? Admittedly, the deadline is until Saturday, but such a decision cannot be made in such a short time. As soon as they learned of the Constitutional Court’s decision, Dalekovod submitted a new, third request for an extension of the binding offer deadline until September 30. One should be optimistic and believe that Konsolidator has decided to extend the deadline, but what if they haven’t? Then that is a new problem for Dalekovod, which brings other consequences. This was not just about the suspension of the proceedings, which prevented an agreement among creditors, but also about the prospects of the company that will be recapitalized, so creditors thought they would collect their claims from Dalekovod. If Konsolidator withdraws from everything, and they have certainly been monitoring what has been happening in the more than a month since the suspension of the proceedings, Judge Kolakušić could bear the burden of Dalekovod and the creditors, regardless of whether he is right or not.

The Annual Leave Doesn’t Last That Long However, this is not the only consequence of Judge Kolakušić’s decision. As can be seen on the Commercial Court’s website, there have been 235 proceedings registered for concluding pre-bankruptcy settlements so far, but as Poslovni dnevnik states, only seven have been resolved. Of those, six cases accepted the settlement, while in the seventh case between Industrogradnja and the creditors, it was rejected by Judge Kolakušić, what a stroke of bad luck. One reason is certainly the slowness of the agreement between debtors and creditors and the time needed for the judge to review the case, but certainly, Kolakušić’s request for a constitutional review of the law has contributed to the judges not making more decisions. Admittedly, July and August are vacation times, nothing significant would have happened anyway, but judges are not on vacation the entire July and August.