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"BC Partners' unilateral decision to, without prior notice to employees or shareholders, install new management within a highly complex business system operating in multiple jurisdictions violates Dutch law and puts the future and value at risk." United groups", the founder of the United Group said in a statement Dragan Šolak.
"We have well-founded doubts that the newly appointed management will be able to lead United Group in the interest of all shareholders and achieve results similar to ours. We will carefully monitor their work and fight for our rights and the preservation of the value of our property," Sholak said in a statement from his office.
As he specified, "since BC Partners bought a majority stake in the company in 2019, United Group's management team has achieved outstanding results, quadrupling the size of the business to a company with revenues of three billion euros."
Total lack of respect
According to Sholak, "the behavior of BC Partners shows a complete lack of respect for the achievements and rights of the management team that owns more than 42 percent of the business."
"Their behavior in relation to United Group sends a message to financial markets, the investment community and founders around the world that BC Partners is a company willing to eliminate its founder for even greater profits," Scholak said.
"Our rejected management buyout offer, which could have tripled their investment in the United group," he pointed out, "is proof of our success and will serve as a benchmark for assessing the success of the new management in delivering value to shareholders."
Scholak: I built United Group from scratch
Emphasizing the successes of the United Group since its foundation in 2000, Sholak reminded in a statement that he built the United Group from scratch.
As he emphasized, together with Victoria and our team, we built a business group that today generates billions of euros in revenue, provides a complete range of telecommunications and media services to millions of users in several countries, and employs over 13.000 people.
"It is a unique telecommunications-media ecosystem, based on our own solutions and systems. We have successfully attracted exceptional talent from the region and beyond, and formed a company that innovates and develops superior solutions, products and brands, using the scale of the group to achieve efficiency and optimize costs," stressed Sholak.
As he specified, "with a combination of superior local delivery by excellent local directors, United Group has successfully competed with and outperformed much larger groups in many markets."
"Last week, United Group stated in the announcement about our replacement that the new management will bring a new strategic refocusing on the EU. However, it was Victoria and I who have already implemented that strategy, transforming the company from a small cable company in Serbia to the largest telecom operator in Southeast Europe, which today generates more than 90 percent of its revenue in the EU," concluded Šolak in the statement.
Stan Miller new CEO
United Group announced in mid-June that there was a change at the top of the company, and that the company's founder, Dragan Šolak, will no longer be the chairman of the Advisory Board, and Vikotrija Boklag, the CEO of the majority-owned group BC Partners.
Stan Miller became the new CEO of the group, and Libor Voncina became his deputy.
"During the six-year partnership with United Group, together with Dragan and his team, we quadrupled the size of the company and turned it from a regional operator into one of the leading European platforms with a clearly strengthened positioning towards the European Union," BC Partners chairman Nikos Statopoulos said on the occasion.
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