Tungsram’s bankruptcy negotiations with creditors were unsuccessful, the company will be liquidated – Mérce learned from Tamás Mehlhoffer, the company’s PR and communications director.
The communications director said that Eximbank, as the largest creditor, did not accept Tungsram’s debt settlement offer, “and their vote is enough to prevent a bankruptcy settlement.” He added that a detailed statement on the developments will be issued on Tuesday.
Gábor Sallai, president of the Independent Trade Union of Tungsram Workers, told the newspaper that they had a lot of faith in the agreement and were shocked by this result.
At the end of April, the large Tungsram lighting company announced that it would end the production of traditional lighting products, and therefore lay off 1,600 employees in several stages until the end of the year. In the following months, a total of almost two thousand people were laid off. The downsizing mostly affected factory workers in all five of the company’s factories, i.e. in Budapest, Hajdúböszörmény, Kisvárda, Nagykanizsa, and Zalaegerszeg.
The company filed for bankruptcy protection at the beginning of May, after its largest creditor, Eximbank, filed for collection on the company’s bank accounts. Their recovery plan presented on August 8 was accepted by most creditors, but Eximbank was not.
