(SRI) - BTA Bank has hired British law firm Lovells LLP to advise it on debt recovery, the bank said on Thursday.
Swiss investment bank UBS currently consults BTA on corporate restructuring while the U.S. law firm White & Case advises the bank on overall legal strategy. Goldman Sachs, BTA’s former restructuring advisor, resigned this week , after the two institutions failed to agree on a new contract.
BTA’s CEO Anvar Saidenov said earlier the bank’s risk assessment team had identified numerous questionable transactions conducted by the previous management. A number of problem loans appear to have been provided to offshore shell companies and thus may be difficult to recover. BTA is reportedly cooperating with Kazakh and foreign authorities in an effort to track and recover the assets.
If this bank has massively negative shareholders equity (as is claimed by it but is a claim the current auditors are obviously not keen to endorse) then the creditors are the de facto owners of this institution and should be setting the agenda - see kzbonds.com. Frankly creditors would be better off instigating the formal insolvency of BTA and conducting their own forensic examination. The history of this matter gives no reason to suppose that BTA management is acting in the best interests of creditors - see kzbonds.com.
It is obvious that you represend the interests of those US companies who causes all this mess because they have an interest in causing BTA Bank
into default in order for them to collect their… insurance money.
It is a pitty! But it won’t happen,
BTA Bank will always stays as the biggest Bank of Kazakhstan, I believe they are handling it quite reasonable so far.