A&G Logistika 01 requests bankruptcy for Studenac instead of pre-bankruptcy

The Commercial Court in Split on Friday requested a response from Studenac regarding the submission from A&G Logistika 01, which seeks to open bankruptcy for Studenac due to a claim of 800 thousand euros, and to dismiss Studenac’s request for pre-bankruptcy.

The submission from A&G Logistika 01 was published on the electronic bulletin board of the courts, as well as the proposal for opening bankruptcy for Studenac.

A&G Logistika 01 is a young transportation company established in 2023, which had 900 thousand euros in revenue in 2025. Its owner and director is Antonio Gavranović, who is also the director of the transportation company Marko-usluge, established in 1991, which achieved 9.46 million euros in revenue last year.

Judge Katarina Mikulić of the Commercial Court in Split has given Studenac three days to respond to the claims in A&G Logistika’s submission.

The situation regarding Studenac has thus become more complex and less certain. Namely, A&G Logistika 01 states in its submission that its proposal for opening bankruptcy proceedings against Studenac was submitted electronically on September 23, 2026, at 5:10 PM, while Studenac’s proposal for opening pre-bankruptcy proceedings was submitted in the same manner two hours later, at 7:16 PM on the same day.

These data, it is stated, arise from the e-Communication system used for electronic communication of parties in court.

Since the Bankruptcy Act stipulates that it is not permitted to initiate pre-bankruptcy proceedings if bankruptcy proceedings have been initiated, A&G Logistika 01 requested the Commercial Court to accept its proposal and dismiss Studenac’s. The company states that these proceedings are initiated by the mere submission of the proposal and are opened only by the issuance of a court decision.

A well-known domestic practitioner of commercial law, attorney Mićo Ljubenko, who has also been part of working groups that drafted the Bankruptcy Act, warned that in Croatia, deadlines in courts are not counted in hours, but in days. He also added that there have not been situations in practice where proposals for initiating bankruptcy and pre-bankruptcy are submitted on the same day.

– We do not have in the law the measurement of deadlines in hours, we have exclusively measurement in days. It is realistic to expect that the court will actually have to approach the principle of proportionality, that is, the interpretation of the meaning of those legal provisions, because the problem cannot be solved grammatically – said Ljubenko.

Hina’s interlocutor is convinced that the purpose of the legal provisions is such that the debtor’s proposal has priority, as the debtor – Studenac submitted the proposal for pre-bankruptcy in a timely manner, before or concurrently with the account blockage, and certainly not after the expiration of the legal deadline of 60 days from the beginning of the blockage.

“Here we cannot interpret that the debtor hesitated. I was twice in the working group for the bankruptcy law, we weighed these things, the purpose of that provision is that the creditor has the right to protect themselves if the debtor does not exercise their right,” said attorney Ljubenko for Hina.

He also explained that creditors proposing bankruptcy do not gain priority in the order of collection, and that there are no economic benefits that would justify their legal interest.

– Your legal interest cannot be to harm yourself and others. The legal interest is to benefit yourself, not to cause harm – he said.

He explained that, statistically, creditors who collect their claims in bankruptcy do not manage to collect more than in pre-bankruptcy, because pre-bankruptcy, by the logic of things, makes sense for the continuation of business.

According to Studenac’s proposal for pre-bankruptcy, it is likely that negotiations with current and future lenders will not be completed quickly enough to secure the necessary funds for uninterrupted operations, which is why it is probable that they will not be able to meet obligations to suppliers and employees within 15 to 30 days.

The same proposal states that Studenac has just over 286 million euros in contracted higher-order international financing arrangements, which include an amortizing long-term loan, a long-term credit line, a long-term loan for capital expenditures, and a revolving credit arrangement.

It also has 108.5 million euros in revolving credit, supplier factoring, and frameworks for bank guarantees with domestic banks.

It also had 60.6 million euros in obligations to suppliers and 10 million euros in bank accounts as of September 23, and in the 30-day maturity, it has another 76 million euros in obligations to suppliers and 13.5 million euros to employees. With longer maturity, it has another 39.2 million euros in obligations to suppliers and another 12.5 million euros to employees.

Studenac employs more than seven thousand people and has over a thousand sales outlets.