BTA Reaches Compromise on $12 Billion Restructuring (Update1) By Nariman Gizitdinov
Dec. 8 (Bloomberg) --
BTA Bank, the biggest Kazakh lender to default this year, reached a compromise with bondholders that will give them cash and new securities equal to about half of the $11.6 billion they are owed.
The package is equal to $5.57 billion, or 48 percent of outstanding principal and interest, according to a BTA statement released today. Creditors will also receive recovery notes allowing them to profit from the sale of assets and 15 percent of BTA’s equity. Kazakhstan’s National Wellbeing Fund will own 85 percent of BTA after the restructuring.
Creditors opposed a September
proposal under which some bondholders would have received a cash payment equal to 17.75 percent of face value, with none of the remainder rescheduled. A creditors committee, including ABN Amro NV and Commerzbank AG, has been in talks with Almaty-based BTA since then.
“I believe creditors are coming to the conclusion that there is not much more to squeeze in terms of better conditions,” said
Luis Costa, an emerging markets debt strategist at Commerzbank in London.
The National Wellbeing Fund took control of BTA in February and the bank defaulted in April after credit markets froze and Kazakhstan’s property bubble burst. Alliance Bank, AO Astana Finance and BTA’s Temirbank have also defaulted, leaving Kazakh lenders seeking to reorganize $20 billion of debt.
A BTA Bank spokeswoman declined to comment beyond the company statement.
Restructuring Terms
BTA plans to pay about $1 billion in cash to the creditors and issue $2.3 billion of new senior debt and about $797 million of subordinated debt, according to the agreement.
The lender will also provide so-called original issue discount debt instruments with an initial value of $763 million and final value of $1.636 billion, to export credit agencies and some eligible trade finance creditors, BTA said.
A group of senior creditors will receive 10.5 percent of BTA’s equity and subordinated financial creditors will receive 4.5 percent under a so-called junior package, according to the agreement.
Kazakh prosecutors issued arrest warrants for former BTA Chairman
Mukhtar Ablyazov and one-time Chief Executive Officer
Roman Solodchenko in March on suspicion that they embezzled money from the bank and laundered it through loans to fictitious companies. Ablyazov and Solodchenko, who now live outside Kazakhstan, have denied the charges.
Disposals by BTA of any of assets in excess of $5 million must be approved, according to the agreement. The state-run fund can only hand over control to a “permitted transferee,” which must not be affiliated with present or former BTA shareholders or managers, or via secondary public offering, according to the agreement.
To contact the reporter on this story:
Nariman Gizitdinov in Almaty at
[email protected]
Last Updated: December 8, 2009 09:39 EST