Unipor group, a company in bankruptcy, recently sold 36,437 shares of Viadukt to the newly established company Via kontrola. Behind this transaction lies the resolution of a long-standing attempt by Viadukt, led by Joško Mikulić, to reclaim 7.9 percent of shares that had been the subject of a dispute for 12 years.
According to data from the Court Register, the founder of Via kontrola, registered at Viadukt’s address, is indeed Unipor group, and the person authorized to represent it is Tomislav Hrvoić, an employee of Viadukt. The explanation of this acquisition’s complexities was provided to us by the bankruptcy administrator of Unipor group, Davorka Huljev.
She was the one who won a case at the High Commercial Court against two former owners of Unipor, Mladen Sokolić and Danko Franetić, who transferred the package of Viadukt shares to themselves as private individuals and managed to return them to the bankruptcy estate after about twelve years of proceedings. In the meantime, Viadukt purchased the majority of claims (98 percent) from all creditors who did not want to wait for the court processes to conclude, thus becoming the majority owner of Unipor group. After that, they were left with only patient and uncertain waiting for the court dispute to end, and when it concluded with a positive resolution, they ordered the implementation of the bankruptcy plan precisely to ensure that the large package of their shares remained in their ownership and that there would be no impact on operations.
– The bankruptcy plan was implemented by establishing a new company and having Viadukt, as the majority owner, convert its claims into equity. In the first phase, the newly established company was owned by Unipor group in bankruptcy, which founded it with its shares, and then in the second phase, Viadukt exchanged the claims it had from Unipor group for shares in the new company, thus effectively acquiring 7.9 percent of its own shares – Huljev explained to us, emphasizing that the entire story, in her opinion, was executed as smartly as possible.
Viadukt’s mentioned purchase cost just under nine million kuna, and after the announcement of the acquisition, the market reacted negatively, and the share price fell by about 3.3 percent. It sounds contradictory, but it is not difficult to understand considering that the same package of shares was worth as much as 107 million kuna before the crisis.
