International consulting company Alvarez & Marsal (A&M) will help two Tajik banks – Tojik Sodirot Bonk (TSB) and Agroinvestbonk — wriggle out of a tight financial situation. This company will work out the plan of recovery of these distressed banks.
Issues related to the current state of TSB and Agroinvestbonk were discussed yesterday at a meeting of First Deputy Head of the National Bank of Tajikistan (NBT), Mr. Jamoliddin Nouraliyev, with Mr. Nikolay Kuznetsov, Head of A&M’s Moscow Branch, and Ms. Atyten Rustamova, Head of Resident Office (RO) of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) in Dushanbe.
According to the NBT press service, A&M will work out the plan of recovery of TSB and Agroinvestbonk while EBRD will provide technical assistance for carrying out those works. Appropriate agreements have reportedly been signed.
Recall, TSB and Agroinvestbonk last year experienced severe problems in providing account-holders with their own savings.
But then on December 21, parliament approved a government decree to issue bonds to recapitalize four distressed banks,
TSB reportedly got 2.25 billion somoni ($285 million at end of 2016 exchange rates) and Agroinvestbonk 1.7 billion somoni ($215 million).
Tajprombank was promised 450 million somoni ($56 million) and Fononbank a relatively meager 80 million somoni ($10 million).
NBT, however, announced on February 24, that it is pulling the licenses of Tajprombank and Fononbank, despite claiming it was taking exhaustive efforts to keep them going.
Customers at those banks have been paid out 17,500 somoni (around $2,000) out of the state’s Individuals Deposits Insurance Fund. Anybody with more than that amount of money in the bank is still waiting to see how much they will get in the end.
In April, it emerged that the government decided unilaterally to allocate the $66 million it had set aside as bailout funds for Tajprombank and Fononbank to construction work on the Roghun hydropower dam.
Alvarez & Marsal (A&M) is a global professional services firm notable for its work in turnaround management and performance improvement of a number of large, high-profile businesses both in the USA and internationally such as Lehman Brothers, HealthSouth, Tribune Company, Warnaco, Interstate bakeries, Target, Darden Restaurants and Arthur Andersen.
Alvarez & Marsal was founded in 1983 by Tony Alvarez II, former Coopers & Lybrand workout specialist and Bryan Marsal, a former Citibank workout banker, after the two met and worked together at Norton Simon Inc. They created a professional services firm focused on turnaround management, corporate restructuring and operational performance improvement in an area where previously individual executives operated.
