Mercator formally took over Konzum’s stores in BiH

The Supervisory Board of Mercator on Tuesday confirmed, at the proposal of the management, the termination of the lease agreement for 83 retail center locations in BiH with Konzum, and the settlement of unpaid rent through the takeover of equipment in those stores for the benefit of Mercator, the company’s management announced.

This formalizes an agreement previously reached within the Agrokor group that the stores taken over by Konzum during the purchase of Mercator in BiH would again become part of the Mercator network, or the Mercator brand.

>>>EBITDA: Konzum in the red; Jamnica, Ledo, and Zvijezda in the black

Reacting to newly published data on Agrokor’s operations following the audit of its business, Slovenian Minister of Economy Zdravko Počivalšek said on Tuesday to reporters that he is not surprised by the negative results of Agrokor, which was purchased by Mercator in 2014, as the Croatian group did not expand on healthy foundations, and he reiterated that the Slovenian government will strive to protect the Slovenian public interest even in the current Agrokor crisis.

– We will not allow the crisis in Agrokor to spread to Slovenia like an infectious disease, and I believe that the government will activate all possible legal means to prevent this in case of such attempts, Počivalšek said at a press conference in Ljubljana.

In an interview with the Maribor newspaper “Večer,” Počivalšek stated that the special law enacted by the Slovenian government after the adoption of the “lex Agrokor” in Croatia protected the public interest in Slovenia because Slovenian law has “suspended” the rule that allows the parent ownership company to dictate business decisions to dependent companies.

>>>Agrokor Audit: Konzum’s loss in 2016 nearly 1.9 billion kuna

In this way, the financial draining of Mercator by the owner was prevented, Počivalšek said.

Slovenian media regarding the Agrokor crisis and its relationship with Mercator state that the Slovenian government would like to see a new ownership structure and changes in business policy at Mercator, so that Mercator can survive in the long term in a highly competitive market of foreign retail chains, given that the company is of great importance as a sales channel for the Slovenian food industry sector, as well as for the labor market considering that Mercator employs around ten thousand workers in Slovenia alone.