BTA Still Seeks Debt Talks After Restructuring Fails to Pass
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Kazakh lender BTA Bank said it will push ahead with talks to restructure its debt for the second time in as many years even after a shareholder meeting today failed to gain enough votes to begin the process. The results of the meeting in Almaty are “certainly not an impediment to achieving restructuring and the bank will continue to take all the necessary steps,” BTA said in a statement. Majority owner Samruk-Kazyna, the Kazakh sovereign-wealth fund, couldn’t back any resolutions on the agenda as an insufficient number of depositary-receipt holders voted, it said. Samruk-Kazyna “is committed to an orderly and consensual restructuring of the bank,” according to a separate statement e-mailed by the fund. It “supports the establishment of a steering committee to negotiate the terms of the restructuring of a certain part of the bank’s financial debt.” Samruk-Kazyna took over BTA in February 2009, two months before the central Asian nation’s largest lender at the time defaulted on $12 billion of debt. BTA missed a coupon payment at the start of the month on its July 2018 dollar bonds, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Read more.