BAKU, Azerbaijan, Nov. 7
Trend:
Russia’s Sberbank and the International Bank of Azerbaijan (IBA) have settled a dispute over funds owed to Russia’s largest bank by IBA, said Ibrahim Alishov, head of Azerbaijan’s Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FIMSA), Trend reports referring to Reuters.
The parties reached an agreement on June 14, 2019, Alishov said.
“According to the terms of the settlement agreement, IBA paid Sberbank $20 million in exchange for securities issued in the name of Sberbank during the restructuring of IBA,” Alishov noted.
“Sberbank withdrew its lawsuit against IBA in a London court,” FIMSA head said, adding that the Moscow arbitration court had lifted a freeze on IBA assets.
In 2017, state-run IBA proposed a plan to restructure $3.3 billion of its debt and said in July it had received approval from creditors holding 93.9 percent of the debt involved.
As part of the restructuring, which was under Azerbaijan’s law, IBA obtained a moratorium from a London court preventing creditors from taking action against it without court permission.
Sberbank, the sole lender of a $20 million facility to IBA, didn’t agree to the restructuring and argued its dealing with IBA was governed by English law. A British court of appeal backed Sberbank in December 2018.