BTA Swings to 24 Billion-Tenge Profit After Debt Restructuring

BTA Bank (BTAS), the Kazakh lender that restructured its debt last month for the second time since 2010, said it swung to a profit under international financial reporting standards.

Net income was 24 billion tenge ($159 million) as of Jan. 1, compared with a loss of 1.02 trillion tenge a month earlier, after the bank booked a profit as a result of the debt overhaul, the Almaty-based lender said today in an e-mailed reply to questions from Bloomberg News.

BTA creditors agreed last month to reduce its liabilities to about $3.3 billion from about $11 billion and extend the maturity of its debt to between three and 12 years. BTA had a loss of 349.3 billion tenge at the end of December under domestic requirements.

Kazakhstan’s sovereign wealth fund Samruk-Kazyna took over BTA, the central Asian nation’s biggest bank at the time, two months before its first default in April 2009. BTA is now the third-largest lender by assets.

To contact the reporter on this story: Nariman Gizitdinov in Almaty at ngizitdinov@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Stephen Voss at sev@bloomberg.net