New auction for sale of Kruševac-based "Savremeni dom" in April – starting price of 92.4m RSD

The Privatization Agency of Serbia announced that it would offer 70% of capital of lumber-industrial company “Savremeni dom” from Kruševac for sale at auction on April 10th at the starting price of 92.4m RSD.

According to the data from the website of the Agency (www.priv.rs), the price is about 38m RSD lower than at the auction on February 20th, which was declared unsuccessful because there were no interested buyers.

The Director General of "Savremeni dom", Bratislav Aranđelović, told Beta agency that five companies had purchased the dossier on that occasion, and one of them had been from abroad.

He estimated that none of the companies had applied for procurement because potential buyers waited for the second auction and lower starting price.

The expectations of the management and the personnel that "Savremeni dom" would be successfully privatized drew the attention of “European Holding Invest”, which gathers the largest companies from Italian Lombardia, and it expressed interest in the Kruševac-based company in November 2008.

On that occasion, the Italians announces that they were willing to invest 200m EUR in construction of production, commercial and residential facilities at the building lot of that company, as well as to employ 3,000 workers.

The President of the Kruševac’s Council of Independent Trade Unions, Milenko Mihajlović, who maintains contact with the representatives of the Lombardian holding, told Beta they were still interested in the company.

The Director of “Savremeni dom”, Bratislav Aranđelović, said that the total debts of that company amounted to about 5m EUR, two thirds of which was the debt to the state, and the new big problem is the provision of funds for payment of salaries.

- The company owes total of seven salaries to the employees, and the wages were paid once a month until December. That is when the last salary was paid – said he.

- We have earned enough money to pay several salaries, but we can not collect it because everybody lacks money. We did the job worth 200,000 EUR for "Serbian Railways", but we can not collect the money because of the current changes in that company – he said and added that "Savremeni dom" had the claims from renters as well.

Aranđelović said that the additional problem represented the fact that the private companies, for which "Savremeni dom" did impregnation (two thirds of the production), had discontinued procurement because they did not know how the privatization was going to end. "Savremeni dom" has 112 workers.

Over the last four years, through several social programmes financed by the state with about 2m EUR, about 670 workers have left the company. The company had two unsuccessful auctions in 2004, and it was not liquidated, but the new estimate of the value of capital was done and, according to it, the new value of 70% of the company is over 577m RSD.

Savremeni dom a.d. Kruševac - stečaju

Agencija za privatizaciju Republike Srbije Beograd prestala sa radom 29.01.2016.

Železnice Srbije a.d. Beograd

Bratislav Aranđelović

European holding invest

Lombardia

Milenko Mihajlović