Kazakhstan

For a man working to restore investor confidence in Kazakhstan’s central bank, the profit that governor Daniyar Akishev made betting bank money on the correct outcome of Britain’s Brexit referendum will go some way to convincing sceptics that he is a man with the smarts for the task, the Financial Times reported.

Kazakhstan’s president certainly caught the imagination of the City of London. In closed-door meetings last week, Nursultan Nazarbayev and other Kazakh officials said the commodity-rich central Asian nation would unload hundreds of companies, including its industrial crown jewels, in the most ambitious privatisation drive since its independence from the Soviet Union, the Financial Times reported.

Kazakhstan is set to embark upon its most ambitious privatisation plan since independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, offering stakes in its largest state-owned enterprises to international investors in preparation for eventual stock market flotations, officials told the Financial Times on Tuesday. The move coincides with a warning from Nursultan Nazarbayev, president, that the world faces “economic turbulence” that for many emerging market countries could dwarf the impact of the global financial crisis of 2008-09.

In Texas or the North Sea, oil companies struggling with falling prices are firing thousands of employees. In Kazakhstan, it is not so simple, the Financial Times reported. The central Asian nation was a poster child of the past decade’s oil boom, building a futuristic capital on the steppe with its hydrocarbon riches, but this year’s tumble in prices has pushed many of Kazakhstan’s Soviet-era oilfields into the red.

Kazakhstan's Alliance Bank has completed a $1.2 billion debt restructuring and the country's sovereign wealth fund will put 220 billion tenge ($1.2 billion) of special deposits into the bank to support the deal, Alliance's chief executive said on Wednesday. Alliance Bank next plans to merge with two other Kazakh banks, Temirbank and ForteBank, controlled by Kazakh billionaire Bolat Utemuratov, also a minority stake holder in Alliance, a process which will lead to a number of job losses.

Kazakhstan's Alliance Bank, majority owned by the country's sovereign wealth fund, is close to completing a $1.2 billion debt restructuring and a merger with two other banks, its chief executive said on Wednesday. Timur Issatayev, who has been meeting creditors in London and New York, told Reuters he was confident of getting the go-ahead at creditor and shareholder meetings due in coming weeks. The proposals, put forward in August, are seen halving the nominal value of existing bond holdings to $300 million.

Individuals in Kazakhstan unable to pay off their loans will be declared bankrupts, the country’s Pesident Nursultan Nazarbayev said when speaking at the extended sitting of the Government Tengrinews.kz reported today. “Borrowers must pay off their loans either in monetary form or through foreclosure of their property," Nazarbayev said. The Government should teach Kazakhstan’s citizens to pay off loans, Tengrinews.kz reported in April, citing the country’s President Nursultan Nazarbayev as saying.

Talks with creditors of Kazakhstan's wealth fund-controlled Alliance Bank have broken down without agreement, the bank's chief executive said on Thursday. "Negotiations have broken down, no agreement was reached," Timur Isatayev told Reuters by telephone. The bank met a creditor committee over the past two days and offered improved terms compared with an initial debt restructuring offer made in January, Isatayev said. Alliance is 51 percent owned by local sovereign wealth fund Samruk-Kazyna, which has reduced its stake in recent weeks.

Kazakhstan's Alliance Bank has set out terms for a second debt restructuring in the wake of the global financial crisis, potentially paving the way for its acquisition by Kazakh billionaire Bolat Utemuratov. Alliance is 67 percent owned by local sovereign wealth fund Samruk-Kazyna but needs to find new investors after Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev last year ordered the fund to sell holdings in several local banks which it bailed out in the global crisis.

The dollar bond of Kazakhstan's Alliance Bank, controlled by the oil-rich nation's sovereign wealth fund, rose on Monday as investors awaited the terms of the banks' second debt restructuring since the global financial crisis, Reuters reported. Alliance said on Monday it would meet creditors in London on Wednesday. At a similar meeting last month the bank said it would not pay out on a series of recovery notes. Alliance's dollar bond due 2017 rose 1.5 points to 41.5 cents on the dollar, according to Thomson Reuters data.