Press release 27 April 2020

Supreme Administrative Court did not grant Danko Koncar permission to appeal – FIN-FSA decisions now legally binding

On Friday, 24 April 2020, the Supreme Administrative Court rendered its decisions on Danko Koncar’s applications for a leave to appeal matters concerning the obligation to launch a public bid for Afarak Group Plc shares and the imposition of a conditional fine. The Supreme Administrative Court does not grant Danko Koncar leave to appeal these matters, and therefore the decisions of the Helsinki Administrative Court remain in force. As a result, the FIN-FSA decisions are now legally binding.

By its decision issued on 1 March 2019, the Helsinki Administrative Court rejected the appeal made by Danko Koncar to repeal the decision of the FIN-FSA of 21 February 2018 (decision on the obligation to launch a bid) obliging Koncar to launch a public bid for Afarak Group Plc shares under the penalty of a fine. The Administrative Court also rejected the appeal made by Koncar to repeal the decision of the FIN-FSA of 9 July 2018 (decision on the imposition of a conditional fine) to order Koncar to pay the base amount of the conditional fine, 40,000,000 euro, since the obligation to launch a bid had not been complied with. However, the Administrative Court considered that the supplementary amount of 10,000,000 euro of the conditional fine had not accrued by the time when the appealed decision was made and therefore repealed the FIN-FSA decision regarding the supplementary amount.

Danko Koncar appealed the decisions of the Helsinki Administrative Court to the Supreme Administrative Court. After the Supreme Administrative Court, by its decisions of 24 April 2020, rejected Koncar's applications for a leave to appeal, the decisions of the Helsinki Administrative Court remain in force. Therefore, the FIN-FSA decision on the obligation to launch a bid and the decision on the imposition of a conditional fine, as regards the base amount, are now legally binding. In practice, this means that it is no longer possible to seek amendment to the FIN-FSA decisions through actual appeal proceedings.

Although the FIN-FSA decisions have lacked legal force, the FIN-FSA has been allowed by law to seek enforcement of the decisions. With respect to the decision on the obligation to launch a bid, enforcement means that the conditional fines imposed to enforce the obligation to launch a bid have been ordered payable since Koncar failed to launch a bid for shares in Afarak Group Plc or to present a valid reason for non-compliance with the obligation. With respect to the decision on the imposition of the conditional fines, the FIN-FSA has sought enforcement of the conditional fine in Finland by the enforcement authority.

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