BTA Posted $52 Million Loss in First Four Months, Regulator Says

BTA Bank, Kazakhstan's biggest lender before the global credit crisis, had a loss in the first four months of the year, the nation's financial regulator said.

BTA posted a loss of 7.6 billion tenge ($52 million), compared with a 45.4 billion tenge loss in the same period a year earlier, the Almaty-based central bank's financial oversight committee said in a monthly report on its website. The figures are based on unconsolidated data calculated in accordance with Kazakh accounting standards. The bank had a profit of 918 million tenge in the first quarter of the year.

BTA's liabilities exceeded assets by 105 billion tenge at the end of last year after its 2010 revenue rose to $6.7 billion, bolstered by $5.8 billion from debt restructuring, the lender said in its full-year earnings report published May 12 and calculated under international accounting standards.

The bank, which defaulted in April 2009, two months after it was taken over by sovereign wealth fund Samruk-Kazyna, will only use profit from operations to bolster its capital, Chief Executive Officer Anvar Saidenov said May 20.

Olzhas Beisembayev, an Almaty-based spokesman for BTA Bank, declined to comment immediately.

The following table shows the four-month performance of Kazakhstan's six largest lenders, along with 14th-ranked Temirbank, and their position as of May 1. The data from the oversight committee are in billions of tenge:

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Bank Assets Loans Provisions Profit/

Outstanding Loss

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Kazkommertsbank 2,429.4 2,275.6 742.0 0.34

Halyk Bank 2,122.6 1,250.2 299.5 11.19

BTA Bank 1,991.0 1,640.7 909.3 -7.58

Bank Centercredit 1,219.4 757.0 114.7 0.44

ATF Bank 1,047.5 841.0 144.1 -12.58

Alliance Bank 518.4 565.6 315.0 -1.02

Temirbank 198.3 207.6 110.3 0.71

All 39 Banks 12,448.9 9,189.0 2,855.7 -0.64

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