Category Archives: Uncategorised

Uzbekistan plans bank sale

APRIL 15 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – The Uzbek government said it is ready to sell off its stakes in two commercial banks, part of a privatisation programme adopted in February. The government said it estimates its 47.6% stake in Aloka Bank to be worth $42.7m and its 63.1% stake in Turon Bank to be worth $29.7m. The government needs to raise cash and also wants to portray Uzbekistan as an investment-friendly economy.

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(News report from Issue No. 277, published on April 22 2016)

Google and Kazakhstan to establish mining data

APRIL 20 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Google and McKinsey formed a joint venture with Kazakhstan’s government to establish a data centre for the mining sector. Asset Issekeshev, minister of investment and new technologies, said that the project was aimed at improving data transparency and project efficiency. Mr Issekeshev told the FT that Polymetal and Eurasian Resources Group have already signed up to the project.

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(News report from Issue No. 277, published on April 22 2016)

Kazakhstan plans to upgrade refinery

APRIL 15 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakhstan plans to complete the modernisation of the Shymkent oil refinery by the end of 2017. The Shymkent refinery, which has a capacity of 5m tonnes, makes up 30% of Kazakhstan’s domestic production of petroleum derivatives. It currently operates below capacity and is often closed for maintenance.

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(News report from Issue No. 277, published on April 22 2016)

Kazakh President signs CSTO army deal

APRIL 18 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakhstan’s President Nursultan Nazarbayev signed into law a deal with member states of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) to facilitate the transit of army units. The deal will allow soldiers and equipment to be transferred more quickly across CSTO member states. The CSTO is a Russia-led security group.

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(News report from Issue No. 277, published on April 22 2016)

Exports from Kazakhstan tumble by a third

APRIL 19 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Exports from Kazakhstan fell by 34.6% in Jan.-Feb. 2016, compared to the same period last year, the Statistics Committee said. In US dollar terms, Kazakhstan’s trade turnover in the first two months of the year was $8.8b. Imports also fell by 34%. Notably, import/export volumes with Kyrgyzstan, which joined the Eurasian Economic Union in August 2015, fell by two thirds.

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(News report from Issue No. 277, published on April 22 2016)

Kazakhstan’s fund invests in Balkhash

APRIL 21 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Samruk Energo, a subsidiary of Kazakhstan’s sovereign wealth fund Samruk-Kazyna, said it paid 11b tenge ($33m) to double its stake in the Balkhash Thermal Power Plant project to 50% minus one share. It did not say who it bought the stake from although last year Korea-based Samsung Engineering said it wanted to quit the project. The new Balkhash power plant will cost around $4.2b to build, according to Samruk Energo’s latest estimates.

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(News report from Issue No. 277, published on April 22 2016)

Uzbek authorities comment on high speed train

APRIL 15 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – The Uzbek government said its high-speed train link from Tashkent to Bukhara, one of its headline projects, will be completed in August. The government has said that the rail link will cost around $400m to complete. It has partnered with European businesses such as Spain’s Talgo and France’s Alstom to build it. Once completed, the railway line will halve the travel time from Tashkent to Bukhara to around 3-1/2 hours.

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(News report from Issue No. 277, published on April 22 2016)

Kazakh businessman closes in on total control of Kazkommertsbank

ALMATY, APRIL 20 2016, (The Conway Bulletin) — The finish line is now in sight for Kenes Rakishev, a Kazakh businessman linked closely to the country’s elite, who has seemingly made taking over Kazkommertsbank one of his priorities.

In this process, control of Kazakhstan’s largest bank has been ripped from Nurzhan Subkhanberdin, a former opponent of Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev.

A KazKom statement said that Mr Rakishev, 36, will buy out Subkhanberdin’s remaining shares in the bank by the summer. Mr Rakishev is also poised to become the next chairman in May.

“[Mr Rakishev] is expected to chair the board of directors and Marc Holtzman, chairman, shall take the CEO position in May 2016 after the extraordinary general meeting of shareholders,” KazKom said earlier this month.

As of this week, Mr Rakishev owns a 71.23% stake in Kazkommertsbank. When he buys out the rest of Mr Subkhanberdin’s shares, his stake will rise to 86%. Samruk-Kazyna, the Kazakh sovereign wealth fund owns a 10.7% stake in KazKom and the rest is owned by unnamed minority shareholders.

This takeover started in February 2014 when, essentially, the Kazakh government started to offload the debt-ridden BTA Bank onto KazKom and also to use it as a Trojan Horse to dislodge the London-based Mr Subkhanberdin.

Analysts have said the government, with Mr Rakishev as the nominated project leader, forced KazKom to buy BTA Bank from Samruk-Kazyna.

This weakened Mr Subkhanberdin’s control of the bank and started a process that has propelled Mr Rakishev to both being the owner and chairman of KazKom.

The eventual merger of KazKom and BTA Bank last year and the promotion of Mr Rakishev are the biggest changes to Kazakhstan’s banking sector since the Global Financial Crisis of 2008/9, but both the government and Mr Rakishev have been assiduous in avoiding commenting in public about it.

Even so, Mr Rakishev has developed an increasingly high public profile in Kazakhstan.

The son-in-law of the current Kazakh minister of defence, Mr Rakishev shot to prominence in 2008 as the go-between for Timur Kulibayev, President Nazarbayev’s son-in-law, and the British Royal Family when he bought an estate in England from Prince Andrew.

Since then, he has had a hand in some of Kazakhstan’s biggest business deals.

He also, officially, owns a 75% share in industrial holding Sat&Co. and a 20% stake in Central Asia Metals, a copper producer listed in London.

To this list he can now add KazKom.

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(News report from Issue No. 277, published on April 22 2016)

Industrial production falls in Kyrgyzstan

APRIL 15 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kyrgyzstan’s industrial production fell by 25.7% to 39.5b som, mainly due to a slump in the mining sector, the Statistics Committee said in a report. The figures reflect the 4.9% GDP decline the Committee posted last week. Without accounting for Kumtor, Kyrgyzstan’s largest gold project, industrial output would have declined by 1%.

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(News report from Issue No. 277, published on April 22 2016)

Stock market: BGEO Group

APRIL 22 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Shares in BGEO Group, the London-listed holding company that owns Bank of Georgia, gained 6% this week, rallying on the company’s positive annual results.

It posted a 38.4% growth in revenue and its retail banking customer base grew by 37.8% in 2015.

Neil Janin, BGEO’s chairman, also gave a strong outlook.

“The current economic and political situation in Georgia is solid and its outlook promising,” Mr Janin said in a statement, praising the recent tax code amendments.

Georgia holds parliamentary elections in October which may impact BGEO. The company was cagey about this and said that it hoped the country would “continue in the right direction”. In Georgian politics, though, anything can happen, as we’ve learned through the years.

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(News report from Issue No. 277, published on April 22 2016)