FORMER EASTERN SLOVAK IRONWORKS GONE TO CYPRUS

Since the start of this year the remnants of Košice’s industrial giant VSŽ have been registered in Cyprus. This is not about the metallurgic concern, which ended up in the hands of the North Americans, but about financial holdings, created by investment group Penta from the rest of the ironworks group. Penta is now planning a final solution for VSŽ by enfolding it into its Cyprian base. But there are still a few minor shareholders in its way, those who haven’t allowed anyone to push them out. Penta has never kept in secret the fact that the shareholders of the former VSŽ are an unwanted annoyance. Thus in a few years Penta has reduced their number from 80,000 to several loyalists, doing this in irreputable ways, thought so also by the Slovak Supreme Court. The Court did not like, for example, the fact that meetings of the association that emerged from the former shareholder company Slovak Investment Holding are mandatory for its members. And also that invitations are not delivered by postal service, but in the form of advertising in newspapers, which for instance, were inaccessible to a Swiss shareholder. I Pg 30