AUG. 30 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Halyk Bank, Kazakhstan’s largest bank by lending, posted an 8.1% rise in the first half of 2013 compared to the same in 2012. Halyk Bank’s profit rose because of interest payments linked to an 18% rise in consumer loans, good news for the Kazakh banking sector which is recovering from the global financial crisis.
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(News report from Issue No. 150, published on Sept. 2 2013)
JULY 22 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — The Asian Development Bank (ADB) has given Azerbaijan’s AccessBank credit worth $50m media reported. AccessBank, set up in 2002, operates dozens of branches in Azerbaijan’s regions and gives loans to small and medium-sized businesses. AccessBank’s debt portfolio for agriculture businesses has grown in the last few years.
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(News report from Issue No. 144, published on July 22 2013)
JULY 16 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — The proportion of bad loans in Azerbaijan will drop to 11% from 14% within the next 12 – 18 months, the ratings agency Moody’s said in a new report on the Azerbaijani banking sector. Moody’s regarded bad loans as those overdue by more than 90 days. It gave an upbeat assessment of Azerbaijan’s banking sector and said that real GDP would rise by 3.5% this year.
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(News report from Issue No. 144, published on July 22 2013)
JULY 10 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Azerbaijan will use $5b from its sovereign wealth fund to help young people get mortgages, a senior official from the presidential administration said. The announcement, coming shortly before a presidential election, could help young people buy a house or an apartment in Baku, an increasingly expensive property market.
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(News report from Issue No. 143, published on July 15 2013)
JULY 11 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — The chairman of Kazakh bank BTA, Erik Balapanov, resigned. The Kazakh government owns a majority stake in BTA bank, which it rescued from collapse during the 2008/9 global financial crisis. Mr Balapanov had been chairman of BTA Bank, which has debts of around $12b, since August 2012.
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(News report from Issue No. 143, published on July 15 2013)
JUNE 18 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — The Kazakh government’s plan to unite pension savings in one fund is looking vulnerable.
Unveiled in January, the plan had been greeted with a decidedly mixed reaction. The idea was to draw efficiencies from a single scheme and to create a fund worth roughly $20b to dip into during an economic recession.
Detractors of the plan, that would see 10 private pension schemes and one state-run pension scheme unified under the Central Bank, said it would be uncompetitive.
Kazakhstan had been the first post-Soviet country to encourage private pension schemes and many bankers considered ditching them tantamount to being a turn-coat.
Now Halyk Bank, which has the largest private pension scheme in Kazakhstan, has said it would rather sell off its pension scheme for cash by the end of 2013 than swap it for shares in nationalised bank BTA.
In March, Kazakhstan deputy PM, Kairat Kelimbetov said that the three biggest pension schemes would be offered shares in state-run bank BTA in exchange. BTA went bankrupt in 2009 during the global financial crisis.
BTA bank is still distressed and had to re-structure its $11b debt for the second time last year.
Halyk Bank’s opinion counts as it is the biggest bank in Kazakhstan by volume of cash lent.
The move to switch Kazakhstan’s pension scheme was always going meet resistance. This is likely to be an unsettling period for the Kazakh banking sector.
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(News report from Issue No. 140, published on June 24 2013)
MAY 29 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — The Kazakh authorities have stepped up their hunt for Mukhtar Ablyazov, the fugitive former chairman of BTA Bank.
First, in April, police in Almaty arrested Ablyazov’s former business partner Erlan Tatishev. Now, on May 29, Italian police swooped on Ablyazov’s wife, Alma Shalabayeva, and their 6-year-old daughter who were living in Rome.
The actual whereabouts of Ablyazov, wanted by British police for lying in court, is unknown, although media reports said Ms Shalabayeva was carrying a Central African Republic passport with a fake name when she was detained.
Lawyers for Ms Shalabayeva said the raid was illegal and that she held a Kazakh passport with a Latvian residency permit allowing her to stay in the EU. The Kazakh prosecutor-general has accused Ms Shalabayeva of being involved in various crimes.
Regardless, it appears defeating Ablyazov in court was not enough for Kazakh president Nursultan Nazarbayev.
He has long considered Ablyazov to be dangerous. After fleeing Kazakhstan in 2009, Ablyazov set himself up in London. He funded political parties and media projects with the thinly disguised aim of unseating Mr Nazarbayev.
The Kazakh authorities accuse Ablyazov of stealing billions of dollars from BTA Bank, trying to overthrow the government and plotting to bomb public buildings.
This year a British court ruled against Ablyazov and ordered him to repay the Kazakh state billions of dollars.
British judges also decided that Ablyazov had lied in court. He has been on the run since 2012.
The net is tightening and the Kazakh authorities may soon have their man. This might, though, be the easy bit.
What to do with Albyazov then is possibly more complicated.
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(News report from Issue No. 137, published on June 3 2013)
MAY 29 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — The authorities in Italy detained and deported back to Kazakhstan the wife and daughter of fugitive billionaire banker Mukhtar Ablyazov, media reported. Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev considers Ablyazov, ex-chairman of BTA Bank, to be one of his biggest enemies.
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(News report from Issue No. 137, published on June 3 2013)
MAY 22 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Alongside the sovereign wealth funds of Qatar and Norway and the China Construction Bank, Azerbaijan’s State Oil Fund (SOFAZ) bought part of a $3.3b stake in Russian bank VTB, the bank told local media. The deal again shows just how much wealth Azerbaijan has at its disposal.
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(News report from Issue No. 136, published on May 27 2013)
MAY 16 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazkommertsbank, Kazakhstan’s biggest bank, reported a 15% rise in net profit in Q1 2013 compared to Q1 2012. The increase was due to higher interest rate payments and a fall in bad debt. Kazkommertsbank’s results are important for the Kazakh banking sector which is still recovering from the 2009 global economic crisis.
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(News report from Issue No. 135, published on May 20 2013)
