Warsaw (Puls Biznesu) – The clash between PKN Orlen, the Polish fuel giant, and Agrofert over shares of Unipetrol, is getting more and more serious. On Tuesday, the Czech company sent an ultimatum. “We again demanded Orlen to pay a fine for failing to realise the agreement. Unless the company pays the money within 30 days, we will file a suit in an arbitrary court”, Dariusz Sobczynski representing Agrofert in Poland said. Andrej Babis, Agrofert CEO has said recently that in such case he would demand a compensation of EUR 350m.
“We have received the notice. If Agrofert agreed to publish the agreements, further decisions of both companies would be obvious to the public”, Dawid Piekarz, PKN Orlen spokesman said. The Polish company has been repeated for several months now that it is trying to reach agreement with Agrofert. The latter says that no offer has been presented.
The previous management of PKN Orlen when trying to buy the Czech petrochemical company Unipetrol signed several agreements before the transaction. It agreed with Agrofert that the latter would not submit a rival offer but instead PKN Orlen would sell it part of chemical units owned by Unipetrol for EUR 103m. Then, the boom in chemical sector started, which raised the value of the chemical companies. The new management analysed the agreements and said it would lose selling the assets at the old price. Agrofert demanded EUR 77m of compensation. The first deadline of paying the fine was September 9th.