Kazakhstan-based state run bank BTA has signed a principal commercial terms sheet on December 7 2009 with its creditors’ steering committee setting out the principal commercial terms of its proposed financial restructuring. The principal commercial terms sheet contains details of the different restructuring packages that will be available to the different classes of the bank’s financial creditors. The aim is to reduce BTA’s total debt, principal and interest.
BTA’s creditors’ steering committee consists of ABN AMRO Bank, Commerzbank Aktiengesellschaft, the DE Shaw Group, Euler Hermes Kreditversicherungs AG (acting for and on behalf of the Federal Republic of Germany), Fortis Investment Management UK, Gramercy Advisors, ING Asia Private Bank, KfW (representing its affiliates DEG – Deutsche Investitions – und Entwicklungsgesellschaft mbH and KfW IPEX-Bank GmbH), Standard Chartered Bank, Export-Import Bank of the US and Wachovia Bank.
Reportedly, Kazakhstan banks were saddled with $45 billion of overseas debt when the US sub-prime meltdown emerged. Subsequently, Samruk-Kazyna, the nation’s sovereign wealth fund, pumped $3.4 billion and acquired minority stakes in Halyk Bank, Kazkommertsbank and Alliance Bank, and full control of BTA in November 2008.
Marcia Favale-Tarter, senior adviser to prime minister of Kazakhstan and an adviser to BTA, said: “The signing of the term sheet is a very decisive and important milestone to ensure the viability of BTA and, as a result, recoveries for creditors.
“BTA, Samruk-Kazyna and creditors, represented by the steering committee, worked effectively and in a spirit of co-operation in this process. The government is satisfied that a solution for ECAs and trade finance was reached at a mutual satisfaction to all parties,” reported the Financial Times.
Details of the term sheet is to be produced in the new year and the plan has to be voted on formally under the nation’s new bankruptcy laws.
