All those who might have thought that Kutle has rounded up his business empire with these acquisitions and satisfied his business ambitions were totally wrong. Although Kutle has until recently claimed that the time for new acquisitions was over and that he was about to start with the consolidation of the acquired companies, in the last ten days Miroslav Kutle has gone on another shopping spree which can be only described with the Globus neologism "Turbo- sensational".
So there it is: Miroslav Kutle has just put his characteristic signature on the acquisition of Dalma Maloprodaja and take-over of companies Prerada and Drvodeljac; these days, he has also begun a campaign to buy the Jadransko osiguranje (former "Dunav") shares, from small shareholders. In parallel, the development of a very complicated project whose goal is the privatisation of Splitska Banka, which would naturally, according to the project, become partly or wholly controlled by Miroslav Kutle, is reaching its completion.
Operation Dalma is a classic example of mafiocratic management of the Croatian economy, all with the goal of strictly controlled privatization. Formerly very prestigious Dalma, powerful and rich commercial company which has covered a large part of Dalmatia, has been systematically undermined and commercially exhausted over the last few years. During the last year, Dalma has reached the bottom, hit by the social disturbances, strikes and protests of the workers who were formally employed by the company but hadn't been paid for months. In addition, the company stopped payments to the pension fund and health insurance for its employees. Destroyed company and exhausted employees were brought to a state in which they unanimously sought a saviour, someone who will buy the company at any cost. So that at least the present state of neither life nor death ends.
Simply said, Kutle agreed to pay DM 1,8 million for 70 Dalma's stores and supply centers, while he will repay the remaining 5.8 million over the next 5 years. By the way, the whole transaction is very interesting. The interest of the public will be tickled by the fact that the official buyer of Dalma is not Kutle's "mother company" Globus Holdin, but its subsidiary Jadrantekstil which is wholly controlled by Kutle although he does not control the majority of its shares. For that Kutle can be grateful for the favorable attitude of the Splitska Banka.
Kutle gained access to Jadrantekstil buying shares from small shareholders. For this he used the credit which he obtained from HPT [Croatian state owned telecommunications monopoly]. With these shares and the control of the Splitska banka stake in Jadrantekstil, Kutle achieved full control of this Split commercial company.
Problems started when HPT realised that they will have a hard time getting their money back from Kutle; therefore, they agreed to a barter: for the borrowed money, Kutle ceded to HPT Jadrantekstil's headquarters building in Kopilica, allegedly worth DM 15 million. Hence, the "postmen" for their money obtained a large building, which they can hopefully sell in the near future, while Kutle, also thanks to Splitska banka took control of Jedrantekstil without investing a cent of his own money.
Not only that: with Jadrantekstil Kutle buys Maloprodaja of another commercial company - Dalma. How? Already mentioned DM 1.8 million, he will cover with a credit from another favorably inclined company: Dubrovacka Banka. The same one which the Financial police accused of loaning money provided by the Croatian government for the reconstruction of Dubrovnik hotels to its "business associates". Therefore, Kutle is supposed to pay the first instalment for Dalma maloprodaja with this credit.
The aforementioned offices were formally used by Dalma, but the company has lately subleased most of them to various private entrepreneurs. Based on that logic, the city administration is owed money by those entrepreneurs and not Dalma. However, the logic of employees is one thing and the logic of capital and primary accumulation of the capital is something else. According to the latter logic, the employees will be short-changed and the money will go to the city administration accounts; in its turn, the city administration will use those fund to finish the sewage treatment plant in the harbor. Therefore, Kutla obtains Dalma while Grabic and the guys from HDZ get political points which will surface in the clean harbor. And the employees? They can only hope not to be laid off as technological surplus.
Kutle isn't the inventor of the system for indirect take-over of companies, but he uses it a lot. He also used that system in the operation Prerada. Shares of that successful Split company were bought for Kutle by a businessman from Austria; the employees (management as well?) were surprised to find out that they were a part of Kutle's empire. With that acquisition, the brightest star in the constellation of newly formed Croatian capitalists obtained a nice dowry: a working brewery, whose value has suddenly jumped after concluded contract for production of German bear "Kaltenberg", successful bakery which supplies most of central Dalmatia with bread, storage silo in North harbor, tens of shops in Split and neighborhood...
These days one can hear the following story around Split: Kutle caught a gold fish and said to her: "Gold fish, tell me your three wishes and I will fulfil all of them." Those who laugh at this story forget that Kutle has already caught two gold fishes. The first one fulfilled all of his wishes several years ago.