Many court proceedings, demanding restructuring, and pre-bankruptcy proceedings are now behind the former construction giant Ingra, a company that spent nine long years trying to stabilize its operations and settle the monetary claims of creditors. This was the impetus for a conversation with CEO Danko Deban, whom we asked about the company’s plans and in which segment it will seek its place in the sun, and we also commented on the state of the Croatian real estate market and touched on the topic of green hydrogen.
Recently, Ingra exited the pre-bankruptcy process. What has been done to conclude that process?
– Over the last three years, as part of a comprehensive restructuring, financial, personnel, and operational, we have done a tremendous amount of work and transactions. All claims filed in the pre-bankruptcy settlement process have been settled. Certainly, the most important process in financial restructuring was the buyback of bonds from the company Lanište. When we started this process, we set an internal goal to buy back 50 percent of the bond issuance, and in the end, we managed to achieve a significantly higher result, even 85 percent of the issuance. The profit from that transaction amounted to 116 million kuna, and the successful management of that process gave us a boost, allowing us to successfully conclude a large number of settlements and realize all further transactions. An important transaction was also the settlement of obligations from the PIK instrument defined in the pre-bankruptcy settlement, which was secured by real estate, and we settled it by selling real estate or buying receivables. Over the past three years, we have also concluded many settlements, both judicial and extrajudicial, which settled a large part of the obligations.
What court processes were involved?
– Ingra had many court processes, some of which date back to the 1980s and 1990s. A large part of those disputes has finally been resolved recently, mostly through settlements. This way, we eliminated most of the risks associated with conducting such processes. Financial and time resources that the company previously had to engage have also been significantly reduced. We will also try to resolve all future processes that may arise through settlements, except when it comes to malicious proceedings against which we will uncompromisingly defend the company’s interests.
What else is important that has been done in the restructuring process?
– Certainly, personnel and operational restructuring was important. We reduced the number of employees and personnel costs by as much as forty percent. A large number of people left the company due to retirement. Everyone who left us did so with very good social packages. We also shut down many affiliated companies, of which we had more than twenty three years ago; today there are only three. As a result, we now operate in a simplified organizational structure; we have the parent company Ingra d.d., then Ingra real estate and Lanište, and for the past two weeks, an affiliated company for renewable energy projects.
