U.S. court recognizes restructuring of Alliance Bank
ALMATY. March 11 (Interfax) - The bankruptcy court for southern New York has recognized the restructuring of the debt owed by Kazakhstan's Alliance Bank.
"The process of the bank's restructuring was recognized by the bankruptcy court for the southern district of New York, U.S.," the bank said in a statement.
In December 2009, the High Court of England and Wales also recognized the restructuring of Alliance Bank's debt, which gives the bank legal protection from court procedures in Britain. Now the bank has similar protection in the U.S.
Inn February 2010, a plan for restructuring the bank's debt was approved by a special financial court in Almaty. The bank has already started implementing restructuring.
Alliance Bank hopes to write off 77.8% of its debt through restructuring, which will lower total debt from 677 billion tenge to around 150 billion tenge ($1.02 billion).
Since the end of 2009, the state fund Samruk Kazyna has owned 100% of the shares in the bank. The previous leading shareholder in the bank was Seimar Alliance Financial Corporation with over 80% of the shares.
The debt restructuring will distribute the bank's shares as follows: 67% to Samruk-Kazyna and 33% to creditors.
Alliance Bank at the end of the first half of 2009 was 49th biggest CIS bank by assets and sixth largest Kazakh bank according to the Interfax-1000: Banks of the CIS, compiled by the Interfax Center for Economic Analysis (CEA).