It's the supermarket group that's too big to fail. But attempts to save it brought down Croatia's ruling center-right coalition and may force an early parliamentary election.

The story of Agrokor, a food and retail concern that employs around 60,000 people across southeastern Europe, has also shone a light on Balkan-style crony capitalism, with its toxic mix of risky financing, loose corporate supervision, and close connections between politics and business.

It has the potential to force the EU's newest member country into a third general election in less than two years, just as its economy — one of the poorest in the bloc — is showing signs of recovery after almost eight years of decline.

Agrokor is 95-percent owned by Ivica Todorić, a tycoon often called 'the Boss,' who started out as a small-time flower-seller and now lives in a castle on the outskirts of Zagreb. It would be hard to overstate his company's importance to Croatia. Its annual revenue is some 50 billion kuna (just under €7 billion) — around 15 percent of the country's gross domestic product.

So when Agrokor was on the verge of collapsing under the weight of huge debts earlier this year, Prime Minister Andrej Plenković's government hastily passed a law — nicknamed Lex Agrokor — that allowed the state to step in and keep the company afloat. Todorić stood down last month and a government-appointed crisis management team took over and began settlement talks with creditors.

The government's involvement highlighted Agrokor's close relations with the political elite. The opposition Social Democrats demanded the resignation of Finance Minister Zdravko Marić, who was a senior manager in charge of Agrokor's strategy and capital markets until early 2016.

Marić denied any knowledge of Agrokor's financial troubles but the Social Democrats said he had lost credibility due to his role with the company and called a no-confidence vote in parliament. Their stance was backed by the junior partner in the government, a loose grouping of anti-corruption parties called Most ("Bridge").

The parliamentary vote on Thursday ended in a tie — 75 deputies voted in favor, 75 voted against — so Marić has hung on, at least for now. But the coalition between Plenković's conservative HDZ party and Most looks dead and buried.

Plenković, a former MEP, fired three cabinet ministers from Most last week for supporting moves to dismiss Marić and a fourth Most minister quit of his own volition.

After Thursday's vote, Božo Petrov, the Most leader, resigned from the post of parliament speaker.

"The vote has shown that the HDZ no longer has a majority in parliament and the only right thing to do would be to call a new election," Petrov told lawmakers as he stepped down.

The HDZ can try to put together a new parliamentary majority but no serious talks are expected until after local elections on May 21. If talks fail, a fresh parliamentary election looks likely — although it may just leave the parties back where they started.

"If there is no new majority and we hold a new election, the HDZ is again certain to win because the Social Democrats are in really bad shape. But the HDZ will not be able to govern on its own so there will again be a frenzied search for coalition partners," said Žarko Puhovski, an independent political analyst and former political science professor.

Puhovski said the Agrokor affair highlighted the dangers of one company having such close connections to political power. A number of senior state officials in the past two decades have been recruited from the company.

"Instead of state institutions supervising Agrokor, Agrokor controlled the state," he said.

Agrokor's long arms

You name it, there's a good chance that Agrokor makes it or supplies it. The company produces meat, dairy products, ice cream, bottled water and cooking oil and also runs the largest newspaper distribution chain in the country. Seven of its companies are listed on the Zagreb Stock Exchange.

Its retail arm, Konzum, has the biggest retail network in the Balkans and its shops are vital for Croatia's lucrative summer tourist industry. In many small Croatian towns, Konzum is the only shop for miles around.

But the company got into trouble after going on a frenzied expansion drive over the past decade, running up debt to creditors and suppliers of 50 billion kuna (€6 billion). Total shareholder funds amounted to 7.5 billion kuna at the end of last September, implying a debt ratio of six times its equity.

Financial consultant Andrej Grubišić said the company's crisis was a "typical combination of fast expansion, overinvestment, low profitability and high-cost borrowing, which resulted in not enough cash flow to service its credit obligations."

"Yet everyone, from banks and bond-holders who received higher yields, to suppliers who were allowed to demand higher prices, knew how things stood and enjoyed the ride while it lasted," said Grubišić, who runs a private consultancy.

An Agrokor middle manager, speaking on condition of anonymity, said there had been signs for a while that all was not well.

"The management never even hinted at any trouble but we all suspected things might go wrong because we kept expanding and taking on loans and yet, in the last few years, we could see the money tightening and our payments for purchased goods slowing down," the employee said.

Two Russian banks, Sberbank and VTB, are among the company's main creditors. Sberbank said last month it was in talks with international buyers on the sale of its share of Agrokor's debt — some €1.1 billion in loans. The other major creditors are Erste Group and Raiffeisenbank from Austria and Italy's UniCredit and Intesa Sanpaolo.

Croatia has hired AlixPartners of New York to advise on the restructuring of Agrokor, which last month agreed a freeze on its obligations. The new management says it has secured an initial liquidity injection of €80 million from local banks but will need another €450 million to operate the company normally this year.

"Agrokor will get a capital boost and reprogramme its debt, the creditors will write off some of their claims and the company will have to enforce a thorough restructuring of its core businesses," said Grubišić.

Puhovski said the crisis may prompt politicians in Slovenia, Bosnia, Serbia and Montenegro — other countries in the region where Agrokor has a substantial presence — to ramp up rhetoric about "protecting national interests." Trade ministers from the four countries met in mid-April to discuss how to minimize the effects of the fallout.

"But in the end, it will all die down and trading interests will prevail again," he said.