OREANDA-NEWS. On 24 July 2008 was announced, that BTA Bank had paid off a USD 63-ml second piece of Islamic loan as scheduled. The two-year Islamic loan was raised in 2006. The margin for the second tranche was set at 70 b.p.

Calyon Bank and Abu Dhabi Islamic Bank acted as mandated lead arrangers of the deal and consulted BTA Bank on Shariah and Mudarabah principles.

The total loan amount was USD 200 million. The first tranche of USD 137 ml with a margin of 40 b.p. was repaid in July 2007.

The borrowed funds were used to finance BTA clients according to the Shariah law.

This repayment has once again demonstrated that BTA discharges its liabilities as scheduled.

So far in 2008 BTA Bank has repaid USD 623.9 ml foreign debts and still has USD 74.4 ml due by the end of the year, which accounts for 2.3% of its assets.

BTA Bank is among biggest banks in the CIS with an extensive banking chain. BTA consolidated assets in the first quarter of 2008 totaled 3,164 billion tenge (USD 26.2 million), a 3% year-on-year increase, its capital grew by 2.1% up to 463 billion tenge (USD 3.8 billion). Consolidated net income of the Bank as of April 1, 2008 made 15.6 billion tenge (USD 129 million), 25% more vs. the first quarter of 2007.

BTA strategic partner banks operate in Ukraine, four regions of Russia, Belarus, Georgia, Armenia, Kyrgyzstan and Turkey. BTA Bank also runs representative offices in Russia, Ukraine, China and the United Arab Emirates.

BTA Bank operates a broad regional network throughout Kazakhstan (22 branches and 280 cash settlement centers) and a biggest chain of ATMs (160). It services more than 1.2 million individual and 100,000 corporate clients.

This year BTA appears in The Banker’s TOP 200. In 2006 and 2007 reputed Itogi magazine named BTA Bank The Best CIS Bank and Euromoney declared it The Best Bank in Central Asia. The Europe Business Assembly (EBA, Oxford, UK) named BTA ‘the Best Enterprise of Europe’ in the Eurasian banking sector in 2007.