The New York agency "Bloomberg" announced that three businessmen in the Balkans - Ivica Todorić, Zoran Janković and Miroslav Mišković held a secret meeting in Belgrade in 2006.
On it, they allegedly "forged" a plan to create a retail giant that would dominate the territory of the former Yugoslavia.
Todorić, the first man of Croatian Agrokor, Janković from Slovenia's Merkator Poslovno sistema and Mišković from Serbia's Delta Holding, according to "Blumberg", gave up on the idea after six hours of negotiations, because they failed to agree on the ownership share.
However, according to the New York agency, it turned out to be a good outcome for two of them, because when Todorić started implementing that plan on his own a decade later, it brought him ruin.
Agrokor's debt-based expansion culminated, according to Bloomberg, with the purchase of Mercator. At that time, Agrokor was the largest conglomerate in the region with 60.000 employees.
When the company, however, could no longer pay its bills, its collapse threatened the stability of the Croatian economy to such an extent that the government in Zagreb undertook its restructuring by adopting a special law.
The New York agency reminds that Todorić is now awaiting trial, while his former empire will soon be managed by investors.
Todorić's fall was also a turning point for a change in the way business leaders in the former Yugoslavia approached strategic decisions.
Emil Tedeski, executive director of Atlantik Grupa, a Croatian holding company with a market value of 550 million dollars, claims that the fate of Agrokor has certainly contributed to entrepreneurs in the region reconsidering their sources of financing, investment and focus.
"It was a good example of how dangerous it is to have inadequate sources of financing and to be out of focus," Tedeski said in a telephone conversation, adding that the most important lesson from Agrokor's failure is smart money management.
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