Latest breaking news is that one of the companies under the auspices of FORTENOVA GROUPA, d.d. - which some time ago committed a squeeze-out of Slovene minority shareholders from MERCATOR, d.d. - bought a 44% equity interest in the holding company owned by the Russian state bank SBERBANK. By selling "to themselves", they are trying to speed up the sale of the Russian share in the company, which is a prerequisite for the refinancing of its liabilities. The meeting at which the owners will reach a decision has not yet happened, because the shareholders do not have a quorum due to suspended voting rights of the Russian bank. Meanwhile, the Russian ownership of FORTENOVA GROUP poses such a problem for the company that they are rushing with the sale of the 44% share indirectly to the company itself, however, Slovene court unfortunately did not foresee such problem when FORTENOVA GROUPA entered the decision to squeeze out the MERCATOR minority shareholders into the court register, in spite of the registry lock won by VZMD. VZMD appealed such a decision and launched a judicial review process regarding the adequacy of remuneration.
Apart from the general failure to comply with the decisions of the EU Council and the current sanctions, VZMD has, since last year, been drawing attention to, and contesting the extremely controversial recapitalization of MERCATOR, without which FORTENOVA GROUPA would not have exceeded the 90% threshold for the squeeze-out of minority shareholders - by a mere 0,005%. According to VZMD associates' estimates, the adequate remuneration should be at least EUR 204.33, which VZMD has reasonably proposed at the general meeting with a counter proposal. The minority shareholders should receive at least EUR 126.94 million instead of EUR 22.37 million! That the Mercator shares are worth more than the offered EUR 36 per share is demonstrated by the trading on the Ljubljana stock exchange where, despite the squeeze-out and poor market liquidity, the share price has reached as high as EUR 50 per share during this period.
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