The company said that the new procedure would only affect claims subject to the previous debt restructuring.

The indebted hardware retailer has paid off some EUR 170m in liabilities over the past three years but it is still saddled with EUR 280m in debt, a vestige of a failed leveraged management buyout that has left the company at the verge of survival and landed former executives in jail.

Despite the deleveraging and a standstill agreement with banks, the company will be unable to pay back creditors EUR 21m by the end of the year as per the restructuring plan, as this would leave it with a fatal shortfall of current assets.

Dnevnik reported end of November that the new restructuring plan, already presented to banks, would involve offloading the core company Merkur, its home appliances business Big Bang and the metals wholesale business Mersteel onto a new company complete with a "sustainable level of debt".

The remains of the old company, including a large chunk of debt, would enter bankruptcy.