Anyone owed money by HH Bank or Heng Feng Bank in Phnom Penh has until Saturday to file a claim. The office that takes the form opens Monday to Friday. That leaves Friday.
Baker Tilly (Cambodia) Co Ltd, which Cambodia’s central bank appointed, is winding up HH Bank (Cambodia) Plc and Heng Feng (Cambodia) Bank Plc. Its notices, both dated 13 August, give creditors 30 days to hand in a completed Proof of Claim Form with supporting documents. A creditor who misses that window “will not be entitled to any distribution of the Bank’s remaining assets”, the notice for HH Bank says. Thirty days from 13 August is Saturday 12 September, a date the firm repeated in a final reminder this week. The notices print office hours of 8.30am to 5.30pm, Monday to Friday, which makes Friday 11 September the last day the office opens.
The National Bank of Cambodia withdrew the licences of both banks on 3 August and put them into liquidation. A third lender went the same way, handled by a different firm. The same day the central bank told depositors to prepare their papers, and said the banking law’s order of priority would decide what they got. Borrowers should keep repaying as normal, it said, and it would monitor how the wind-up went.
A liquidator is the firm that takes control of a closed bank, collects what it is owed, decides which claims are good, and shares out the rest. It is not a court. Baker Tilly says it now controls the assets, operations, books, records, systems and affairs of both banks. It can ask a creditor for more, and can admit or reject any claim in whole or in part under Cambodian law. Nobody else at either bank can admit one.
Filing is what puts a creditor into the queue. Article 64 of the 1999 Law on Banking and Financial Institutions then sets the order for the claims the liquidator admits.
Seven ranks, and the money runs down them. The costs of running the liquidation come first. Taxes owed to the National Treasury come second, and up to three months of staff wages third. Secured and preferential claims come fourth, subject to a condition in the article about when the creditor took its security. Deposits come fifth, alongside other claims from creditors who are not banks. Other banks rank sixth, and subordinated debt and equity-type loans come last.
Inside that fifth rank the article adds a proviso. Each depositor holding one or more riel accounts gets “an equal amount up to two million riels”. That is about 494 US dollars at the central bank’s official rate for 9 September. The article does not say whether that is all a depositor gets, or a first slice. Dollar accounts sit in the same rank without that proviso.
What the notice bars is a share of the money left at the end. The debt itself is a different question, and every claim goes through the liquidator’s check either way. The same thirty-day window ran on earlier Cambodian liquidations. Prince Bank’s liquidator gave creditors thirty days from 13 January, and Panda Bank’s gave them thirty days from 2 March.
Baker Tilly set the last day and the office hours on the same notice. And the firm that fixed the deadline, takes the form and rules on the claim is the firm whose fees Article 64 pays before any deposit.
Borrowers are in a different position. Both notices keep loan repayments coming in, and say money owed to either bank stays due. Nothing else at either bank runs without the liquidator’s written authorisation.
The form goes to Baker Tilly’s office at B3-071 and B3-072 in Borey Elysee, on Koh Pich. Questions go to hh.inquiry@bakertilly.com.kh for HH Bank and hf.inquiry@bakertilly.com.kh for Heng Feng, and both notices carry telephone numbers.
