A-Tec Plummets in Vienna as Penta Talks Fail, Deadline Lurks

A-Tec Industries AG (ATEC) plummeted in Vienna as Penta Investments Ltd. said talks with the insolvent Austrian engineering company failed and Chief Executive Officer Mirko Kovats faces a midnight deadline to pay creditors.

Shares dropped 29 percent to 84 cents at the 5:30 p.m. close, the lowest since A-Tec started trading in the Austrian capital in 2006. Kovats has until midnight to raise funds he needs to pay creditors 47 percent of their claims, a quota agreed to in a restructuring plan last year.

The sum needed to fulfill the plan stands at 210 million euros ($282 million), according to Wolfgang Hrobar, a member of A-Tec’s creditor committee. Matthias Schmidt, the insolvency administrator, must receive the sum by the end of this month. If he doesn’t, he is mandated by creditors to take control of A-Tec and break it up to raise as much as possible.

A-Tec restarted negotiations with Penta on Sept. 22 after a previous agreement to sell most of its assets to a group led by Contor Industries GmbH fell short of the funds required to pay creditors as Pakistani investor Alshair Fiyaz’s Solstice International dropped out of the deal.

Penta said in a statement today that the talks failed “due to the time constraints and due to the very different expectations of parties involved.”

“Penta Investments is declaring its readiness and willingness to submit a competitive and binding offer” to Schmidt “for particular assets of A-Tec in due course,” according to the e-mailed statement.

To contact the reporter on this story: Boris Groendahl in Vienna at bgroendahl@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Angela Cullen at acullen8@bloomberg.net