An overwhelming majority of creditors (93.9%) to the International Bank of Azerbaijan (IBA) approved the bank's revised debt restructuring plan at a meeting on July 18, the lender has announced. Azerbaijan's largest bank, state-owned IBA needed the approval of two thirds of creditors to swap its obligations for sovereign ones under less favourable terms. The lender had announced that it had secured creditors' support a week earlier.

IBA's default on $3.3bn worth of foreign obligations in May came as a surprise to investors, because the bank had already been rescued by the government once in 2015 and because the government had offered verbal reassurances to creditors in recent months.

The terms of the restructuring plan, which was made public in late May, angered some investors, such as asset managers Fidelity Capital and Franklin Templeton and hedge funds Promeritum Fund and VR Global Partners, which filed a complaint in a US court against the lender in June. However, their case was rejected in late June.

During a conference call on July 19, Khalid Ahadov, the bank's chairman, said that the overwhelming support for the restructuring plan was indicative of its fairness, and that their support meant that the IBA management could now work on its future strategy, the goal of which is to privatise the lender in 2018. Other observers, such as analyst Maria Malyukova of Moody's Investor Services, believe that finding investors to privatise the bank will be tricky, seeing how not only has it defaulted twice in two years, but its prospects for future business generation and profitability are grim.

However, during the conference call, Ahadov claimed that some investors have already approached the bank regarding a potential takeover, and that they are waiting for the restructuring process to be completed in September to "start an official process [of negotiations]".