Russian Central Bank Prepares Plan to Create Reserves for Transaero Lenders

The Russian Central Bank will make a general plan of creating reserves for the lenders of Russia’s second largest commercial airline Transaero, Central Bank head Elvira Nabiullina said on Saturday.

LIMA (Sputnik) — On September 28, Vitaly Vantsev, a shareholder of Transaero, which has approximately $4 billion debt, that there were two options for the airline company. The first one would be handing 75 percent of the company’s shares to Russia’s flagship airline Aeroflot and then restructuring. The second option, according to Vantsev, would be bankruptcy, which "is the worst option for all of the participants in the process."

"We are now studying the situation in all banks in order to understand the impact of possible solutions on the financial condition of these banks, how they will comply with the standards and whether the owners are able to help in case of problems. After studying this information about each bank individually, we will consider and, if needed, will take a single solution for all banks," Nabiullina told reporters.

The Central Bank stated earlier that it was considering granting banks the right to create reserves for Transaero loans under the schemes approved by the Bank of Russia.

"This is not going to be some individual solution for each bank to create reserves, but perhaps a plan that will allow this situation to pass more smoothly," the Central Bank head added.

Russia’s flagship commercial airline Aeroflot announced its intention to acquire a 75 percent stake in Transaero in early September. However, the talks on a takeover of the airline deadlocked. Aeroflot representatives took a tough stance at the talks, saying that the banks should have better calculated risks while signing lending contracts with an extremely risky strategy.

On October 1, Aeroflot refused to buy Transaero after it filed for bankruptcy.