This project involves a shareholder loan from UniCredit Bank Austria AG (UBA) to its subsidiary in Kazakhstan, ATF Bank JSC (ATF), in the amount of $200 million. UBA has applied for a MIGA guarantee of $190 million for a period of up to eight years against the risks of transfer restriction, expropriation, and war and civil disturbance.

ATF is planning to use the funding to grow its loan portfolio, especially in the small and medium enterprise segments, over the medium term. The previous shareholder loan guaranteed by MIGA in fiscal year 2009 has been used for asset-liability management, specifically to extend the tenor of ATF’s liabilities to better match the tenor of the bank’s restructured assets.

Environmental Categorization

The project is a Category FI under MIGA’s environmental review procedures.

Development Impact

This would be MIGA’s second guarantee in support of ATF under the agency’s Financial Sector Initiative. This project is consistent with the objectives of the Joint IFI Action Plan—a coordinated program of the World Bank Group, the European Investment Bank, and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development—to address the recent financial crisis. This project will support Kazakhstan’s largest, and systemically important, foreign-owned bank. The shareholder loan will provide long-term funding to ATF at a time of financial turmoil and will supplement MIGA’s approach to assist in stabilizing the Kazakh financial sector, in part, by helping foreign banks to support their local subsidiaries by keeping them adequately capitalized.