| Sodbiznesbank creditors held a meeting The first meeting of creditors and depositors of Sodbiznesbank (SBB) was held at the Luzhniki small sports arena yesterday. The bank did not have the forty thousand depositors that SBB representatives spoke about in the spring. According to the data announced by the liquidator Andrei Belkov, only 14 thousand 481 claims of creditors were submitted to him, and approximately 500-800 people came to the meeting. “Just don’t make them nervous,” the liquidator’s representative asked the Vremya Novostey correspondent, “we’ve been calming the investors down for several days.” However, the meeting participants were still nervous and ultimately were unable to form a creditors’ committee. Many of them remained confident that the revocation of SBB’s license in May (based on money laundering charges) was unfair and “only harmed ordinary people.” Andrei Belkov, meanwhile, announced that settlements with depositors who have declared their demands could begin in the second half of November and will be done in two ways: through Sberbank (in which SBB depositors can open current accounts) and Impexbank (it will be settled in cash). True, so far the funds accumulated by the liquidator for the first tranche of payments have turned out to be enough to satisfy only half of the citizens’ demands.
At about 10 a.m., the stands around the hockey rink of the small sports arena gathered depositors (among whom there were many SBB employees), representatives of corporate creditors (who bought SBB bills) and a number of observers, including Deputy General Director of the Deposit Insurance Agency Valery Miroshnikov. The company was very diverse, including both the “working class” and seemingly wealthy citizens. At the entrance, meeting participants were registered and given voting ballots. The agenda of the meeting included two main issues - the formation of the SBB creditors' committee and the approval of the liquidator's report and the interim liquidation balance sheet. “For example, they just called me on Friday and said that some kind of meeting would take place,” one of the investors worried when entering the hall, “I had to take time off from work.” Mr. Belkov, together with his assistant, led the meeting from the presidium, located on the second tier of the stands. At the same time, in addition to the regular security of a small sports arena, as at hockey matches, the police were on duty, and not far from the arena there was a riot police bus. Apparently, the organizers of the event did not forget the events of May of this year, when SBB depositors, shortly after the revocation of its license, blocked Krasnaya Presnya near the bank’s head office.
The most interesting part of the meeting was Andrei Belkov’s publication of the liquidator’s report. This process and the subsequent exchange of opinions (the investors spoke for two or three minutes, using three microphones between the stands) finally convinced: the liquidator and the investors were very unsympathetic to each other. Mr. Belkov said that the amount of liabilities to all creditors is 3.192 billion rubles, including 2.25 billion to private investors. His opponents were concerned about the question: whether the SBB’s assets would be enough to pay them off. The answer was disappointing. According to Mr. Belkov, “a significant portion of the bank’s assets are either problem assets or the deadline for filing claims for which has not yet arrived,” and “there is no doubt about the assessment of liquid assets” at only 1.24 billion rubles. At the same time, he called the collection of loans from 11 insurance and investment companies for 3.9 billion rubles “the key issue in determining the adequacy of funds for settlements with the bank’s creditors.” The loans are already overdue, and the likelihood of their collection is apparently not very high. The promise to begin payments at the end of November if the Bank of Russia quickly approves the interim liquidation balance did not reassure the people, especially since so far, according to Mr. Belkov, the collected funds cover only 53% of the recognized claims of individuals. After listening to Mr. Belkov, the meeting participants began to speak. Some of them immediately said: “According to our data, millions have already been paid to the employees liquidating the bank, and this is our money.” One of the investors noticed that “it’s cold in the hall,” and this indicates a bad attitude towards those gathered. Another SBB client said that a small sports arena was too expensive a venue for holding a meeting, and Mr. Belkov needed to rent “some kind of cinema for 2000 seats.” But most of all, the investors were worried that they perceived the interim balance sheet by ear, and they were never given it to read: “We need a paper signed by the liquidator, only in this form can the report be approved, otherwise the meeting means nothing.” As a result, the investors did not approve the report, and the matter did not even come to the formation of a committee of creditors. When voting for the size of the committee (which could include from 2 to 11 participants), none of the options received the required number of votes. “I declare the meeting closed,” Mr. Belkov summed up. A representative of the initiative group of SBB depositors (which has already created the non-profit partnership “Association of Clients of CB Sodbiznesbank LLC”), Sergei Kessler told the Vremya Novostey newspaper: “We are dissatisfied with the way the preparation for the meeting and the meeting itself took place. Now we are considering the issue of holding a rally in front of the State Duma building.” According to him, if the liquidator does not provide depositors with an interim liquidation balance sheet (Mr. Belkov, meanwhile, notes that any depositor can familiarize himself with it), depositors will contact the Central Bank and State Duma deputies. Yuri VERETENNIKOV |
|
