New round between Vicentin and Banco Nación: what did the company respond to the report of its creditors | Business opening

By a letter addressed to its president, Eduardo Hecker, cereal producer Vicentin accused the National Bank having done “biased claims“In a document that the entity, the main creditor of the bankrupt company, released last week.

On Friday, Banco Nación released a press report, in which it communicated its “final report” on the “attempt to empty the assets of the Vicentin group“.

“It should be noted that the BNA is the largest credit institution in the country and Vicentin SAIC’s greatest financier throughout his careerThe company replied, in its memo.

“The BNA is not a bankruptcy judge, or a prosecutor, or a criminal judge, and therefore, we understand, it should not incur any conduct qualifications that do not concern it., thus trying to influence irregularly, through the press, the minds of the various magistrates, prosecutors and officials who act in front of the courts ”, he fired.

“The BNA is an institution for all and It cannot be used in the service of the ideology of the occasional occupants of its board of directors, let alone those seeking to demolish the company., for the recovery by liquidation of its debts, without taking into account the continuity of the company and the stability of the jobs of its employees ”, he added. References are to economist Claudio Lozano, vice-president of the bank and one of the promoters of the frustrated nationalization of the company, and the proposal of foreign financial creditors, who are lobbying for the company to sell assets to pay off debts.

The company has been bankrupt since March, with a total debt of $ 99,345 million. Of this amount, u $ s 300 million (equivalent at that time to 18.182 million dollars) correspond to Banco Nación.

In the letter to Hecker, the current board of directors of the grain company expresses its assurance that BNA will have “a very important role to play, along with creditors and producers, in building a”New Vicentin“”. They add that “it will be revitalized” by “a reasonable restructuring of all parts of its debts”, as well as by further contributions from new potential shareholders.

“However, the company can’t help but respond to some biased statements», He clarified.

According to Vicentin, the Nation’s report presents inconsistencies regarding the impact of the devaluation. “For the debtor in dollars, and Vicentin always has been, a devaluation reduces his net worth because not all his assets are expressed in that currency (tax balances, peso credits and fixed assets). However, in the flow of activity, it improves its competitiveness, since part of its costs are expressed in pesos, so over time it recovers. Vicentin did not have time to recover“, He says.

“The reduction in withholding does not benefit the exporter in the way it indicates, since the main concerned is the agricultural producer. The reduction in deductions only benefits the industrialist in added value“, keep on going.

“We cannot speak of accounting inconsistencies based on” sums and balances “that we do not know,” he emphasizes.

The company also reports inconsistencies regarding the impact of the drought. “The drought was, indeed, in 2018. But, to run its factories, Vicentin imported soybeans from the United States, which arrived in fiscal year 2019, impacting its results.

Finally, the grain company underlines “significant inconsistencies” at the heritage level that the report reflects, concerning the assets and liabilities of the company. “To be able to answer correctly, we would like to receive the full report, where, surely, the source will be cited, because the company’s figures are far from those shown. Vicentin never had a net worth of $ 1,220 million, to name one of the differences, ”he explains.

Vicentin Directory asked Hecker to access the details of the report, which he criticizes for being prepared by “technical assistants with a clear ideological stance against“,” In order to know the technical reasons for each of the arguments that fueled this exhibition, which was quickly distributed to the press for mass distribution, “he said.

He floated, this way, a new confrontation between Vicentin and the government which, since the failure of its attempt to expropriate the company, has channeled its pressure on the company across the Nation. In October, the Nation presented a criminal complaint against the company for Alleged falsification of its 2019 balance sheet, which showed losses of $ 52,536 million.

In the context of this “cold war”, the company had challenged the supervisor that the named entity in the company, Sergio Arelovich, for “manifest hostility“,”animosity“Y”bitterness“.

“We also hope that the energies deployed in this excessive advertising focus will result in the participation of the BNA in the restructuring process of Vicentin SAIC, in order to ensure the continuity of an Argentinian company, with national capitals and also with the participation of Argentinian investors, within the framework of a market dominated by foreign firms ”, added the note to Hecker, which was invited to continue talks “In connection with the bankruptcy process being developed”.

He recalled that the Nation was Vicentin’s greatest financier throughout his career. He accompanied the note with a statistical table, which describes the financing that the bank granted to the company, both in amount and as a percentage of the sales and investments it represented.. In 2002, Vicentin had a US $ 30 million line of BNA, representing 5% of its turnover (US $ 567.17 million, and 13.06% of total pre-financing lines at the BNA). export granted by the bank. In 2019, according to the statistical annex presented by Vicentin, the 300 million dollars that the Nation gave him represented 7% of its turnover (4,255.74 million dollars), 68% of its settlement in foreign currencies and 28 57% of the total lines granted by the bank.

“As we can see, The investment effort took place from 2005 to 2014, with the creation and growth of Renova, a process that was accompanied by the bank whose rating rose from $ 37 million to $ 150 million.He remarked.