Mining and Smelting Combine Bor Submits Reorganisation Plan to Economic Court - Plan to Introduce Professional Management, Gradually Decrease Number of Employees

(Photo: rtb.rs)

The Court can apply all the necessary administrative procedures in the next four days and, by May 20, i.e. eight days before the expiry of the legal deadline after which all domestic companies being restructured will no longer be protected from their creditors, take a temporary measure guaranteeing the Bor Combine Group legal protection from debt enforcement in the next six months as well, company officials said.

“The document provides for a new ‘middle’ date for the company’s total liabilities, namely, March 31, with a different liability level across classes, both as regards its current creditors as well as those in the past that will get an interest rate for the new period,” the officials said.

As part of the hiring of a professional management as a new measure for the company’s reorganisation, the plan is to launch a bid invitation in the second half of the year to select a company that will provide management services, the officials said.

Unlike the measures provided for by the previous documents, two new measures including hiring a professional management and cuts in employees have been added and the move would be implemented step by step in the next five years as of 2017, they said.

“The rationalisation, as a new measure provided for by the plan, leaves room for additional corrections in the number of employees, i.e. it does not limit the hiring of new people, and what is certain is that there will be no social programme this year, Bor Combine Deputy General Manager Mirjana Antic said.

The measure provides for reducing the number of employees at the end of the payment period and the completion of the plan implementation to under 3,500.

“The measure is completely in line with a natural employee drain in the said period”, Antic said.

Bor Copper Basin General Manager Blagoje Spaskovski said that what was really important was that Bor should settle its liabilities towards its creditors by the expiry of the deadline and in the amount defined under the plan.

“The first liability to be met is the loan granted by the EDC Bank to build a new smelting plant and a sulfuric acid plant. In this category, it is followed by the guarantees given by the Bor Combine in the form of a mortgage or a collateral,” he said.