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While the town of Opatija and surrounding areas (Matulji, Mošćenička Draga i Lovran) is waiting for the decision of the Croatian Financial Services Supervisory Agency (HANFA) on the official offer toward the stockholders of the Liburnia Riviera Hotels (LRH), on Monday they planned to gain expert legal advice on their options in case they cannot secure sufficient funds for the stock offer.

The new Mayor of Opatija, Mr. Ivo Dujmić, is determined to protect the city’s interest with all available legal means. The first move is initiating a lawsuit. With a yearly budget of 140 million kunas, they cannot ensure sufficient funds to cover the offer toward the stockholders. The city of Opatija and the other Liburnia municipalities claim that they acquired the stocks in June 2007 through an agreement with Croatian Privatization Fund (HFP). In fact, this agreement is a fulfillment of the HFP’s obligation from 1992 to ensure that all of the former Opatija municipalities receive comparable shares of the LRH stocks in order to cover unresolved ownership issues. On the other hand, HANFA points out that “if this agreement for acquiring and transferring stocks reached in 1992 was valid, the interested parties would not have to come to another subsequent agreement.” According to the law on the takeover of joint-stock companies, the price is calculated as an average of the stock market price in the last three months since the offer was announced. This is a discouraging fact for Opatija and the three municipalities, since the price range of the LRH stock fluctuated between 5,000 – 7,000 kunas! In other words, this means that they need to ensure more than 1.3 billion kunas.