News

The US Court of Appeals ruled in favor of BTA Bank

On January 18, 2022, the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled in favor of BTA Bank JSC in a protracted dispute against bank bondholders represented by a group of affiliated Panamanian companies: Atlantica Holdings Inc, Baltica Investment Holding Inc, Blu Funds Inc.

In 2012, the mentioned bondholders filed a lawsuit against the former major shareholder of BTA, NWF Samruk-Kazyna JSC. Later, in 2013, similar claims were filed against BTA.

The claimants stated that they purchased BTA's subordinated bonds based on a 2010  Information Memorandum provided by BTA and Samruk-Kazyna. However, the document, according to the claimants, contained distorted and incomplete information, based on which, investors received not the expected income, but a loss due to the restructuring of BTA's debt in 2012.

In August 2020, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York ruled in favor of BTA in a summary judgment finding that the bank did not make any omissions in providing investors with material information and, if such an omission occurred, the claimants failed to provide evidence of this. The court also ruled that “no reasonable investor” would consider other statements about BTA securities to be misleading.

At that time, the court considered that the claimants did not provide evidence that their investment losses were caused by misrepresentation of information. They also failed to show a causal connection between their losses and alleged omissions in the Investment Memorandum on the Samruk-Kazyna deposit placed with BTA. This information about the deposit was posted on the websites of Samruk-Kazyna and BTA Bank.

On January 18, on appeal, the claimants alleged the District Court's error in finding the facts. The Court of Appeal did not agree with this allegation of the claimants, awarding BTA a complete victory.

Executive Director of BTA Bank Renat Salykbayev, who oversees the trial, said: "We were confident that the Court of Appeal would come to a correct and fair conclusion and are very pleased with the complete victory."

BTA was represented by lawyer Jason Vigna of Mintz, Levin, Cohn, Ferris, Glovsky, and Popeo P.C.

Contacts for the media:

Eldar Shamsutdinov / Head of the Press Service of BTA Bank JSC

E-mail: eshamsutdinov@bta.kz; press@bta.kz

Telephone: +7(747) 264 08 04

Web: www.bta.kz