Fabris Peruško appointed as new Croatian government commissioner for Agrokor

ZAGREB, (Patria) - Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenković confirmed at a government session that Fabris Peruško will be the new government commissioner for Agrokor, Telegram reports.

Plenković said that Peruško is currently a member of Tisak's management board, comes from the Agrokor finance system, and worked as a consultant at McKinsey.

- He seems prepared to take on the duties of the extraordinary commissioner and complete the settlement and restructuring process - said Plenković.

The Croatian Prime Minister appointed Irena Weber as Peruško's deputy.

- Weber is an economist within the Agrokor system, dealing with non-core insurance. She has been with Agrokor since the end of April, has extensive experience, and knows our economy and market - Plenković explained the government's choice.

- I expect that the Commercial Court will accept these proposals, the appointment of both the commissioner and his deputy, and issue appropriate decisions so that they can assume their duties as soon as possible - concluded the Croatian Prime Minister.

He stated that communications were also held with the members of the Temporary Creditors' Council regarding the engagement of Fabris Peruško and Irena Weber, who, as he said, received their candidacies very positively. He assessed this as very good, given that they are thus gaining the support of the stakeholders with whom they will continue to cooperate in the extraordinary administration process.

Peruško graduated from the Faculty of Electrical Engineering at the University of Ljubljana, obtained his master's degree from the Faculty of Economics in Ljubljana, and in 2007, he earned an MBA from Babson College in Boston.

He spent five years as a consultant at the consulting firm McKinsey &Co., where his work focused on restructuring projects in various industries, from banking to FMCG and technology, in Europe and Russia. From 2016 until joining Tisak, he worked as an independent advisor to the management of several regional companies.

Since June last year, Irena Weber has been an advisor to the extraordinary commissioner Ante Ramljak, responsible for the asset portfolio and non-core business in Agrokor. She began her career at CAIB, from which she left shortly after Ante Ramljak, first to the brokerage firm To One, and then moved to Hypo Alpe Adria Investment as a member of the management board. From September 2016 to March 2017, she was a member of the management board of Kentbank, and then she moved to Agrokor.

The extraordinary commissioner of Agrokor, Ante Ramljak, who was appointed commissioner by the Commercial Court in Zagreb on April 10, 2017, at the government's proposal, submitted an irrevocable resignation to Prime Minister Andrej Plenković last Tuesday, February 20.

Ramljak came under pressure at the end of January when the media reported that he had hired his former company, Texo Management, as consultants for Agrokor, which receives almost HRK 250,000 per week for consulting services, which caused public debate about high consulting fees and Ante Ramljak's potential conflict of interest.

The Croatian Prime Minister stated at the time that he was unaware of the fees paid to consultants in the Agrokor restructuring process, that he did not support their amount in principle, and that he would give his opinion on the entire case after reviewing the report submitted to him by the extraordinary commissioner.

Later, new revelations followed, for example, that Texo was engaged by AlixPartners on the same day that company was engaged as the main restructuring advisor for Agrokor. Then the media published that Ramljak was formally registered with Texo Management until April 30, even though he had become the extraordinary commissioner for Agrokor since April 10.