On 15 June 2012, the Board of the National Bank of Ukraine (the "NBU") adopted Regulation No. 246 introducing amendments (the "Amendments") to the procedure of obtainment by residents of foreign-currency loans from non-residents and providing by residents of foreign-currency loans to non-residents (the "Procedure") set forth in NBU Regulation No. 270. The Amendments shall come into force 4 months after the date of registration by the Ministry of Justice, which occurred on 9 July 2012.

The Amendments provide, inter alia, that:

The borrower, which is not a bank, shall not apply directly to the NBU for registration of a loan agreement with a foreign lender. Instead, the documents required for registration by the NBU will need to be submitted by the borrower to its loan servicing bank. The required set of documents includes (i) a hard copy standard-form notice on the loan agreement (the "Loan Notice"), (ii) the loan agreement (together with other additional agreements and documents related to its fulfillment and exercising currency exchange operations thereunder) and (iii) a copy of receipt evidencing payment of the NBU registration fee. It should be noted that the Amendments do not provide for the possibility of submitting a notarized copy of the loan agreement for registration. Thus, parties to a loan agreement (amendments thereto) may need to ensure there is always an extra original for the purposes of compiling the set of documents for the NBU registration;

The set of documents must be reviewed by the loan servicing bank. The loan servicing bank has 4 business days to review the set of documents and approach the NBU for registration of the loan agreement or return the documents to the borrower for further changes in the relevant documents;

The NBU is required to register the cross-border loan agreement on the basis of the electronic versions of documents received from the servicing bank, namely: (i) the Loan Notice confirmed by the servicing bank and (ii) the servicing bank's formal undertaking to service the transactions contemplated by the loan agreement. Notably, this list is not exhaustive since the NBU is entitled to require from the loan servicing bank any additional information it may deem necessary for the purposes of registration;

The Amendments have cancelled the 7-business day term for the NBU registration and the amended Procedure does not provide even for an indicative registration term;

The registration of the loan agreement will no longer be evidenced by a loan registration certificate. Instead, the NBU shall issue a hard-copy Loan Notice with the NBU's stamp confirming the registration.