Tag Archives: banking

Kazakh businessman buys controlling stake in BTA Bank Ukraine

DEC. 11 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Ukraine’s Antimonopoly Committee gave permission to Kazakh businessman Kenes Rakishev to buy a majority stake in BTA Bank Ukraine, strengthening his control over Kazakhstan’s banking assets.

One day before disclosing Mr Rakishev as the mystery buyer, the Ukrainian regulator said it had given the green light to a citizen of Kazakhstan to buy the 50.007% stake in BTA Bank that Kazkommertsbank, Kazakhstan’s largest lender, didn’t already own.

Kazkommertsbank and Mr Rakishev completed the takeover of BTA Bank in Kazakhstan earlier in 2015.

This takeover deal, though, only concerned the Kazakhstan-based parent company. BTA Group also owns banks in Russia, Belarus, Georgia, Armenia, Turkey and Ukraine.

Now, Mr Rakishev will control BTA’s subsidiary in Ukraine, buying it from Andryi Levkovsky, a Ukrainian businessman linked to several investment companies.

The 36-year-old Mr Rakishev is the son-in-law of Kazakhstan’s powerful defence minister Imangali Tasmagambetov and is considered a member of the country’s most inner clique of elite.

BTA Bank Ukraine’s results in the first three quarters of the year were positive. Net income grew by 30% to $119,800, making the bank a small player in Ukrainian market. The bank’s total assets amount to 2.8b hryvnia ($120m).

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 261, published on Dec. 20 2015)

Kyrgyzstan CBank changes rules

DEC. 9 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kyrgyzstan’s Central Bank changed the reserve requirements for its commercial banks to reflect the less stable state of the Kyrgyz som. It reduced the proportion of minimum reserves held in som by 4.5% to 4% of a bank’s total reserves and also increased the requirement to keep 12.5% of the bank’s cash in foreign currency, up 2.5%.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 260, published on Dec. 11 2015)

Kazakh investor to buy BTA Ukraine

DEC. 10 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Ukraine’s Antimonopoly Committee said it gave permission to an unnamed private investor from Kazakhstan to buy 50% of BTA Bank Ukraine. BTA Bank in Kazakhstan owns 49.9% of BTA Bank Ukraine. The rest of the shares are indirectly owned by several murky Ukrainian investment companies.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 260, published on Dec. 11 2015)

Ratings agencies warn Kazakhstan that NPLs are worsening

DEC. 7/10 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Ratings agencies Standard & Poor’s and Fitch said that worsening economic conditions in Kazakhstan threaten to generate bad debt that could drag down the banking sector.

The warnings add to the mounting analysis which suggest that the initial impact of low oil prices and a recession in Russia were underestimated. Last week the World Bank said that the Kazakh economy would grow by its lowest rate since the 1990s.

Specifically Standard & Poor’s downgraded the rating of Almaty-based Eurasian Bank to B from B+ because of an increase in its non- performing loan portfolio.

“The level of non-performing loans increased to 11.1% of total loans on Nov. 1, 2015 from 7.5% on Jan. 1, 2015,” it said in a statement.

Non-performing loans are those which are more than 90 days overdue.

After the Global Financial Crisis of 2008/9, Kazakhstan’s banks held portfolios with the largest proportion of non-performing loans in the world. It had managed to reduce this before the onset of the current economic malaise.

But the current economic problems have slowed this recovery.

Similarly to the World Bank last week, Fitch said the Kazakh economy would grow by just 1% this year.

“Medium-term prospects for Kazakhstan’s banking system have deteriorated in 2015 due to lower oil prices, the economic slowdown (especially in non-extractive sectors) and the weaker tenge,” it said in a statement.

Unlike the World Bank, though, it did say the recovery would be quicker and that the Kazakh economy would grow by 2.3% in 2015, compared to a World Bank estimate of 1.1%.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 260, published on Dec. 11 2015)

Armenia’s Armeneconombank and BTA merge

DEC. 8 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Armenia’s Armeneconombank said it intends to merge with BTA Bank Armenia. The two companies signed a memorandum of understanding in Almaty, confirming the deal. The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development owns 20% of Armeneconombank. Kazakhstan’s BTA Bank owns 65.2% of BTA Bank Armenia. BTA Bank, in turn, is owned by Kazakhstan’s Kazkommertsbank.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 260, published on Dec. 11 2015)

Kazakhstan’s DevBank and Al Hilal sign agreement

DEC. 3 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — The state-owned Kazakhstan Development Bank and Abu Dhabi-based lender Al Hilal signed an agreement on the development of Ijara, an Islamic banking financial instrument linked to leasing real estate. Earlier this week Kazakhstan’s Central Bank also said it is considering halving capital requirements for Islamic banks to 5b tenge ($16.2m).

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 259, published on Dec. 4 2015)

EBRD to boost activity in Armenia

DEC. 2 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) said that its priorities in Armenia over the next four years would be to improve small business competitiveness, develop local capital markets and improve public utilities. The EBRD is a major investor in Armenia with over $1b worth of investments.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 259, published on Dec. 4 2015)

VTB Bank injects $40m into Kazakh subsidiary

NOV. 20 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Russian lender VTB Bank said it had injected $40m into its Kazakh subsidiary to increase its total capitalisation by 44% to around 24b tenge ($78m). The move is more evidence of a worsening economic outlook. In the first three-quarters of the year, VTB Bank recorded losses of 791m tenge ($2.6m), compared to a 850m tenge profit in the same period last year ($4.6m at the time).

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 258, published on Nov. 27 2015)

Kazakhstan’s Halyk Bank files Q3 results

NOV. 17 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Halyk Bank, one of Kazakhstan’s largest retail banks, reported increased net income in the third quarter of 2015 of 36b tenge, roughly a third larger than the third quarter of 2014. In US dollar terms, taking into account the devaluation of the tenge, Q3 2015 and Q3 2014 are roughly the same. Operating expenses grew by 12.7% in the first 9 months of 2015 compared to the same period in 2014 because of wage inflation linked to the devaluation of the tenge.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 257, published on Nov. 20 2015)

Kazakh CBank approves Kaspi Bank ownership

NOV. 10 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — The Kazakh Central Bank approved a request to modify the shareholder composition of Kaspi Bank. President Nursultan Nazarbayev’s nephew Kairat Satybaldy and Mikhail Lomtadze, chairman of Kaspi Bank, transferred their shares and joined the holding company JSC Kaspi, headed by Kaspi Bank director Vyacheslav Kim. Kaspi Bank is the 6th largest bank in Kazakhstan by assets.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 256, published on Nov. 13 2015)