Plaza Centers, listed on the London (LON: PLAZ), Warsaw, and Tel Aviv, announced that the International Centre for the Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) Tribunal dismissed on jurisdictional grounds its EUR 385 million claim against Romania concerning the Casa Radio project in Bucharest – a large-sized project in the Romanian capital city initiated in 2004 under a public-private partnership, where PLAZ owns 75%. 

Over two decades since the beginning, the project designed on 600,000 sqm around a massive communist-era unfinished structure remains a ruin, and the Romanian authorities sued the investor at the Court of International Arbitration in London (LCIA), where it requires EUR 2 billion in losses and compensations, besides the termination of the public-private partnership contract signed in 2006, Profit.ro reported.

ICSID based its decision on findings relating to the conduct of Plaza Centers and “certain historical agreements referenced in the company’s public disclosures published between 2016 and 2020,” the company announced. The Tribunal ordered that each party shall bear its own costs related to the arbitration.

Plaza Centers said it is reviewing the ICSID award, including the reasoning and the implications of the Tribunal’s findings, assessing its position and “considering all available options and next steps.”

Plaza Centers' consolidated cash fell to about EUR 1.85 million against bond obligations of roughly EUR 176.7 million, according to The Globe and Mail on April 1, 2026,  leading management to conclude it cannot meet its current July 1, 2026, redemption schedule and will seek further postponement from bondholders.

NASDAQ and TASE-listed Elbit Imaging (EMITF), Plaza Centers’ initial main shareholder, was founded and developed by Israeli billionaire Mordechay (Motti) Zisser until it defaulted in 2013, hit by the financial crisis, and eventually came under the control of US investment funds after Zisser died in 2016. Now, Elbit group still holds a minority stake (11%) with unidentified investors trading through York Capital Management Global Advisors holding the rest of it. 

Plaza was primarily focused on developing western-style shopping malls in emerging markets and completed leisure centres in markets such as Hungary (first investment in 1996), Poland, the Czech Republic, Serbia, and India until 2013. A large part of the centres developed in Central Europe were sold to the French group KlePierre. After Zisser, the company focused on the sale of residual assets. 

In Romania, Elbit/Plaza Centers, under the ownership of the US investment funds, approached in 2019 the large Israeli real estate developer active in Romania, AFI Europe, for selling its 75% participation in Casa Radio for EUR 60 million. It claimed it had spent EUR 85 million in demolition, design, and foundation works until 2010, when the project entered conservation. 

The sale attempt failed at that time because the deal involved, among others, an authority’s permit for changes in the structure of the project. But the negotiations are still ongoing until the end of 2026. 

Plaza Centers also invested in plots of land in more Romanian cities, but it sold them gradually.

iulian@romania-insider.com

(Photo source: Daniel Caluian/Dreamstime.com)