Ferrexpo's June AGM Becomes a Formality as $100 Million Rescue Hangs in the Balance

Ferrexpo faces liquidity crisis: AGM agenda cut, shares suspended, auditors demand $100M equity injection before accounts can be finalized.

The iron ore miner Ferrexpo is heading into its annual general meeting in June with an agenda stripped of the votes that matter most. No decision on the 2025 annual report, no approval of auditor pay, no vote on directors' remuneration – all because the company has not yet published its accounts. The AGM will instead handle routine business: re-electing directors, authorising share buybacks, and allowing meetings to be called on 14 days' notice. The absent items will have to wait for a separate shareholder gathering, with no date set. Board member Vitalii Lisovenko, who has served for over nine years, will step down at the meeting.

The real reason for the logjam is a single, stubborn knot: Ferrexpo needs to raise at least $100 million in fresh equity before auditors will give a going-concern opinion. Without that opinion, the 2025 accounts cannot be finalised. Without the accounts, trading in the shares – suspended since early May at the company's own request – will not resume. The last recorded price in London was 28.58 pence.

Management insists an equity injection is the only viable route. Institutional investors have expressed tentative interest, but their commitments came with conditions that could not be met within the required timeframe. The largest shareholder, Fevamotinico, which owns 49.32% of the outstanding shares, has said it will back the raise only if it does not exceed $100 million and if it can participate proportionately. The company itself warns that there is no certainty a financing solution will be reached.

Meanwhile, a separate, self-inflicted cash drain is deepening the hole. Ferrexpo is owed 90.3 million dollars in VAT refunds from the Ukrainian tax authorities – money that is legally blocked from being paid out. Article 200.4 of the country's tax code prohibits refunds to companies whose ownership structure includes sanctioned individuals, a reference to former owner Kostyantyn Zhevago. Even court rulings in Ferrexpo's favour have failed to unlock the funds. A working group of the Ukrainian parliament's economic committee is looking into the issue, but no breakthrough has emerged.

To buy time, Ferrexpo sold its last remaining transport asset, the transshipment vessel Iron Destiny, for net proceeds of 7.7 million dollars. The ship had seen little use since the war began and was eating up maintenance costs. The sale stretches the company's liquidity buffer only until late August 2026. After that, the cash will run out unless the capital raise or the VAT refund comes through.

Debt financing is effectively off the table. Banks are reluctant to take on the know-your-customer risks, the sanctions complexities around Zhevago, and the ongoing insolvency proceedings that have placed seizure orders on assets including shares in Ferrexpo AG and its Ukrainian subsidiaries. The Ukrainian asset management agency ARMA is also seeking to confiscate a 49.3% stake in the subsidiary Ferrexpo Poltava Mining, alleging illegal mineral extraction – a claim the company denies and says it will vigorously contest.

On the operational front, the war in Ukraine continues to exact a heavy toll. Ferrexpo produced just 592,751 tonnes of iron ore pellets in the first quarter of 2026 – a 45% drop from the previous quarter and a 72% plunge from the same period a year earlier. Russian strikes on the country's power grid have repeatedly shut down production. Only one of the company's four pellet lines is currently running, with the last line restarted at the end of February. Staff in Ukraine are on reduced hours or furloughed, investment and maintenance programmes have been halted, and procurement of supplies has been slashed. Exports move by the company's own rail fleet to Central and Eastern Europe, as Black Sea ports remain largely blocked.

The June AGM will provide a formal forum but no answers to the core questions. The shareholder vote is not expected to unlock the capital raise, lift the trading suspension, or resolve the VAT impasse. Those decisions have been pushed to an unspecified date – if there is still a company to make them. Without a financing solution in the coming weeks, Ferrexpo faces a cash crunch by late summer. Every piece of the puzzle – the auditors, the investors, the courts, and the regulators – remains stuck.