Imperial doesn't want to be second
large bankrupt bank
Yesterday, Imperial seemed to have lost its last chance to regain the right to be called a bank: an appeal against the court's decision, which recognized the revocation of its license as lawful, was rejected. On April 14, the arbitration court must declare Imperial bankrupt. But the next appeal, already prepared by the bank, will obviously delay this process again.

Imperial clearly does not want to follow the path of Tokobank and become the second major bank to be declared bankrupt since the start of the crisis. And although the Bank of Russia revoked Imperial’s banking license on August 25, it is still not bankrupt.
Let us recall how events developed. A trial was scheduled for December 15 to declare Imperial bankrupt. But four days before this, the bank’s former management filed a lawsuit with the Moscow Arbitration Court to invalidate the Central Bank’s order to revoke the license. This delayed the process for two months: the court assessed the validity of the claim. Already on February 9, Imperial’s claim was denied. But on March 5, the bank filed an appeal against this decision. Yesterday the Moscow Arbitration Court rejected it too.
As the temporary manager of Imperial, Vyacheslav Medvedev, stated, full satisfaction of the bank's creditors' claims is possible only within the framework of bankruptcy proceedings. And, in his opinion, the bank should be declared bankrupt as quickly as possible, since even after the meeting of creditors held on December 3, claims continued to be received. The protracted bankruptcy process has already led to the fact that the volume of claims has increased from 4.5 billion rubles to 5 billion rubles, and this, in turn, will only delay the start of payments to creditors.
And if the bank’s management had not come up with a new move, Imperial would most likely have been declared bankrupt on April 14 at the next court hearing. Moreover, everything was ready for the bank’s bankruptcy last year (the register of creditors’ claims was compiled on the day of the first meeting of creditors).
However, today Imperial is going to file a cassation appeal with the Federal Arbitration Court of the Moscow District to declare yesterday's court decision unlawful. So his bankruptcy may again be postponed indefinitely.
MAXIM BUYLOV

Newspaper "Kommersant" No. 56 dated 04/06/1999, p. 7

Authors:

Maxim Builov