BTA Creditors Face Losses Up to 82.25% in Restructure (Update3)
By Nariman Gizitdinov
Sept. 7 (Bloomberg) -- BTA Bank creditors face losses of as much as 82.25 percent after Kazakhstan’s biggest bank offered to restructure $10.3 billion of debts following its default earlier this year.
The bank proposed
four options, including paying a maximum of $1 billion to buy back debt at 17.75 percent of face value. The debt reorganization plan, posted on the bank’s Web site today, was presented to creditors last week, a spokeswoman for Almaty-based BTA said.
“At least this is better than nothing,” said
Damir Seisebayev, director of research at Asyl Invest, an Almaty- based brokerage that holds BTA debt, in an e-mail. “The BTA proposal is quite acceptable taking into account the lender’s negative capital and huge losses.”
Kazakhstan, central Asia’s biggest energy producer, took control of BTA Bank in February as it spent more than $13 billion to prop up the nation’s banks and economy. BTA was one of three Kazakh lenders to default this year, ending principal payments in April after some creditors demanded accelerated settlement.
The restructuring proposal is part of a broader business plan for BTA that assumes
Samruk Kazyna, the state bailout fund, will convert 683 billion tenge ($4.53 billion) of deposits and subordinated debt into equity. The plan includes a proposal for a so-called bad bank that will hold 2.1 trillion tenge of loans to retail, corporate and small and mid-size business customers.
Profit Forecast
BTA forecast net income of 76 billion tenge next year, after a net loss of 1.12 trillion tenge in 2009, according to the business plan. Profit may increase to 160 billion tenge in 2014, the bank said.
A
separate presentation indicates the bank plans to sell units, including BTA Bank Armenia and BTA Bank Georgia. Three other units, Sekerbank TAS in Turkey, Temirbank and BTA Ipoteka, are “under strategic review,” the bank said in the document.
“My confidence in BTA and the country’s reliable political management remains the same as when I bought the bank’s bonds,”
Renzo Palmucci, a private investor in Italy who owns BTA bonds maturing in 2011, said by e-mail. “I plan to hold out for a better offer.”
Palmucci said he would accept the conversion of bonds into new securities with the term extended for seven years. The new bonds should have the same yield until the original maturity date, then pay a rate equal to German bunds plus 5 percent, he said.
Investor Expectations
BTA estimates that it needs 55 percent of creditors to accept the cash buyback option for the debt restructuring plan to be successful, according to the business plan. The bank said it plans to add $8 billion to its equity by cancelling some debts and converting bonds into equity.
“The cash buyback option is coming in at around current market prices,” said
Milena Ivanova-Venturini, director of Equity Research Banking & Finance, a Kazakh unit of Moscow-based Renaissance Capital, in an e-mail. “Our impression is that many market participants were expecting an offer in the lower 20s.”
The bank’s $350 million of 8.5 percent bonds maturing in 2015 trade at 16.5 cents, down 65 percent this year. BTA Bank shares fell 109 tenge, or 4 percent, to 2,591 tenge today in Almaty, pushing their 2009 decline to 95 percent.
Restructuring Options
The other options available to creditors include swapping their holdings for seven-year debt at a 60 percent discount and reduced interest. BTA said it needed 15 percent of creditors to accept this option.
Creditors can also roll over their holdings into 15- year subordinated debt at no discount and a reduced interest rate. About 10 percent of creditors would need to accept this option.
Finally, BTA offered to convert debt into equity at an 80 percent discount. BTA said 20 percent participation was needed for this option. BTA must submit restructuring plan to the Kazakh financial watchdog by Sept.18.
Creditors of Alliance Bank, the London-listed Kazakh lender that also defaulted in April, agreed in July to restructure $4.19 billion of debts. The deal will be completed by Nov. 1, according to the bank.
Negotiations between creditors and Astana Finance, the third Kazakh bank to default, are continuing.
BTA’s financial position was weakened by “dubious loans” to companies outside Kazakhstan that have sparked investigations into corporate governance abuses by former management, BTA said in the management presentation.
Kazakh prosecutors issued international arrest warrants for former Chairman
Mukhtar Ablyazov and former Chief Executive Officer
Roman Solodchenko in March on suspicion that they embezzled money and laundered it through loans to fictitious companies. Ablyzov and Solodchenko have denied the charges.
“The Kazakh government destroyed the independent bank and is now desperate to blame me and my management team for the disarray at BTA,” Ablyazov said in a statement last month.