New era dawns for Ellaktor Group – Management is taken over by Dutch Reggeborgh

A new era begins for Ellaktor from today as in the extraordinary General Meeting that took place today and lasted almost 6 hours, the side of Reggeborgh prevailed, and  is officially the major shareholder of the Ellaktor group. Almost 2.5 years since Change4Ellaktor, we have a successive situation in which the Dutch are now leading, whose proposal for a new administration was approved with a percentage of 61.27% with the new CEO being the former president of HRDH, Aris Xenofos. A little earlier, the recall of the Kallitsantsi administration was voted in favor with a percentage of 61.14%.

It was preceded by the rejection of the share capital increase proposal (by 89.5%) and the acceptance of its reduction (by 88.55%). Then the revocation of the Board was voted in favor and the installation of a new one according to the proposals of Reggeborgh who take over the historic group. The last two issues were formally approved afterwards.

The issues of the General Assembly were the reduction of the share, the increase of the share capital, the revocation of the BoD, the appointment of a new BoD, the revocation of the audit committee, the appointment of a new audit committee.

The new board of directors

The new board of directors of the Ellactor group consists of: CEO Aris Xenofos. The executive chairman of the Board is the lawyer George Mylonogiannis. The non-executive member of the Board is the mechanical engineer Dimitris Kondylis and as independent non-executive members are the civil engineer Konstantinos Toumpouros and the president and CEO of the Hellenic Development Bank, Athena Hadjipetrou.

What was said

Before voting on the third issue for the termination of the Board the outgoing CEO of Ellactor took the floor and stated that Reggeborgh is requesting a Board of Directors of her choice without proposing anything specific and spoke about competition issues.

Then Mr. Sotiropoulos, a representative of Reggeborgh, spoke, saying that he was waiting for the outgoing Board of Directors to show bravery, as their crush on the first issues is obvious. He also said that obviously Mr. Kallitsantsis does not have shares because he would have transferred them to Invesco, which voted against the first 2 issues raised by the outgoing administration. He also accused the Kallitsantsi administration of freezing the accounts and the public stance of Mr. Kallitsantsis against the outgoing administration. He asked for the vote to dismiss the current administration and the election of a new Board.

Holders of a total of 164.729 million shares participated with a percentage of 76.87%. of the total share capital.

What Anastasios Kallitsantsis said

Anastasios Kallitsantsis in his position speaking said that today Ellaktor holds a leading position in all sectors. It participates in 5 of the 7 provinces and acquired Marina Alimou, the largest in the Balkans. As he said, it is the largest construction group in the country with an outstanding 1.8 billion euros.

It is the second largest producer of electricity with 491 MW and recently made an agreement with EDPR the 2nd largest in Europe for the development of 900MW. It is the largest producer of biogas and carries out 30 environmental projects. The total portfolio exceeds 3 billion euros and has a liquidity of over 400 million euros.

He said that the proposed increase of the share capital by 50.4 million euros is in the interest of the shareholders as it will contribute to the liquidity in the constructions. Of these, 40.8 will go to the subsidiary Aktor to leave behind the problem in construction. The remaining 9.6 million euros will go to Ellaktor for new investments. He also noted that the new projects in Greece and Romania are profitable.

Giving data, he said that in 2018 the group had liabilities of 761 million euros and loans of another 115 million euros, while the receivables reached 233 million euros, which today have significantly improved.

He also spoke about the problems with the competition case. At a time when the construction arm of the group was collecting projects (rail, road, sewer) to stimulate its object, the issue of the project cartel, worked negatively. He said that because of this case, more than 400 million euros of contracts were lost.

The new projects from 2018 until today, as he said, are up to 1.1 billion euros, 260 million euros were contracted in claims, while another 120 million euros came from additional contracts.

The performance of the group

He said that from the second half of 2021 he expects even better results, expansion of concessions targeting Egnatia and the new tender for Attiki Odos, development of environmental projects (especially in MEA Attica) and RES but also participation in PPP projects.

What the Reggeborgh spokesman said

The representative of Reggeborgh, Mr. G. Sotiropoulos, also made an initial statement and said that lately, there are accusations of unfair competition, which he refuted. He also spoke about yesterday’s move of Invesco with the application for precautionary measures and the final decision.