Kazakhstan and Sberbank sign share purchase agreement

Baiterek National Managing Holding and the Russian Sberbank subsidiary in Kazakhstan have signed a share sale and purchase agreement, as the holding’s press service told the Kursiv edition.

Baiterek said that it has assessed the importance of the bank for the entire financial system in Kazakhstan.

«The modern infrastructure and technologies, which the bank owns, are the solid ground that will help us to bring the bank back to the operation of financing the real sector of Kazakhstan’s economy very soon,» the holding said in a statement.

The bank is going to continue to provide services for its clients. As the holding noted, the bank won’t change the terms of service for its current clients.

«Once the deal is completed, the bank will be able to restore its active bank operations, for example, to attract deposits, conduct payment transactions and develop new products and services for customers and businesses,» Baiterek said.

In addition, the holding says that it is not going to change the bank’s personnel. The two sides are going to close the deal in the near future.

Kursiv had tried to get a comment about the deal with Sber from the Agency for Regulation and Development of the Financial Market of the Republic of Kazakhstan (ARDFM) but received no reply at the time of publication.

At the end of February, the U.S. put sanctions on correspondent and payment accounts of the Russian Sberbank. On April 6, the blocking sanctions were imposed on the Sber subsidiary in Kazakhstan. According to these sanctions, all American assets of the bank must be frozen and no US citizen or entity could make a deal with these assets. However, a joint statement between the ARDFM and Sberbank Kazakhstan later said that the bank will be able to conduct transactions from April 13 to July 12, 2022.

In April, a part of the retail loan portfolio of Sber Kazakhstan was acquired by Halyk Bank, a big Kazakhstani commercial bank. The deal covered car loans, unsecured loans, emergency loans and mortgages. The total amount of this debt was about $693 million. Later, Halyk Bank bought $231 million worth of loan portfolio for small and medium-sized businesses, including $10.2 million of loans provided under different public programs.

The only stakeholder of Baiterek is the Committee of State Property and Privatization under the Ministry of Finance of the Republic of Kazakhstan.