Ljubljana, 04 February (STA) - A public auction has been called for 14 February for a nearly 30% share in publisher DZS, owned by Delo Prodaja, to recover just over EUR 1 million in debt, the portal Finance reported on Tuesday, adding that the proceedings were launched by Ekdis, majority owned by media mogul Martin Odlazek's Farma Stična.
The starting price for 677,201 DZS shares is set at EUR 2.5 million. The security deposit of EUR 250,000 is to be paid a day before the auction.
Delo Prodaja was part of the business empire of Bojan Petan, CEO of spa company Terme Čatež and DZS.
The auction is being launched because the newsstand operator Delo Prodaja failed to pay off its debt after the debt restructuring process.
The court-mandated debt restructuring was ordered in 2020 at the proposal of Luxembourg-based York Global Finance Offshore BDH, which said that Delo Prodaja had been in violation of a 2017 financial restructuring agreement. Claims, by York as well, had fallen due, while Delo Prodaja was insolvent.
A business report from the end of 2019 showed that Delo Prodaja had an outstanding debt of EUR 26.46 million, of which EUR 12.62 million were to York.
Creditors approved 95% of ordinary claims to be written off with the remaining 5% or just over a million euros to be paid off in 36 months. Maddox, owned by the York fund, got the 73.22% share of Delo Prodaja, which it later sold.
The final deadline for the claims to be paid off is 22 June 2026, Finance writes.
Delo Prodaja chairman of the board Matej Sodin told Finance that the issue was being resolved in court and that he could not give more details. He also did not want to say whether Delo Prodaja would pay off its debt before the auction.
Other owners of Delo Prodaja are Ares Real with 26.3%, Valeon (0.27%), Dušan Jereb (0.17%) and Modra Linija Holding (0.04%).
The largest owners of DZS are the Terme Čatež spa with 34.33%, Delo Prodaja with 29.97%, TZS, owned by Petan's wife Ada de Costa Petan, with 14.1%, Dnevnik with 10% and Marina Portorož with 3.73%.