Agrokor asks for more time for Mercator acquisition agreement

Croatia's Agrokor has asked for more time to reach an agreement on the takeover of Slovenian retailer Mercator, the web portal SEEbiz reports.

Agrokor, which has been intensively negotiating the reschedule of Mercator's EUR 1 billion debt with creditor banks over the past few days, asked Friday for the extension of the deadline to reach aforementioned agreement, the Maribor daily Vecer cites unofficial sources as saying.

Ivica Todoric's Agrokor is trying to get one more week for negotiations with banks, after Austrian banks Erste and Raiffeisen insisted on the recapitalization of Mercator with minimum 200 million euros that would be provided by creditor banks to reduce the financial risk.

In that way, the share price that was last year agreed to be EUR 120 (without a capital hike) would be additionally lowered, which would put major shareholders, primarily Pivovarna Lasko, in an unenviable position.