Baring Funds sold nearly 963,000 shares of the fintech company Kaspi.kz in the fourth quarter of 2024, according to an extract from the register of shareholders of the Kazakhstan Stock Exchange (KASE) as of January 1, 2025.
It is unclear how much Baring Funds earned from selling its shares in Kaspi.kz. However, in Q4 of last year, the stock value ranged between 50,700 tenge ($96.97) and 58,000 tenge ($110.93). This suggests that Baring Funds may have earned between $93.3 million and $106.8 million.
As a result, Baring Funds’ stake in Kaspi.kz declined by 0.48 percentage points to 23.3%. The company now holds 46.48 million common shares of Kaspi.kz. Meanwhile, the shares held by other major shareholders — Mikhail Lomtadze (21.53%) and Vyacheslav Kim (20.39%) — remained unchanged in Q4 2024.
In response to Kursiv.Media’s inquiry, Kaspi.kz’s press service stated that, as a shareholder of a public company, Baring is free to make independent decisions regarding the buying and selling of the stocks it has invested in.
Baring Funds’ stake in Kaspi.kz has declined for the third time in the past twelve months. In April 2024, all three major shareholders reduced their stakes when Kaspi.kz went public on Nasdaq. At that time, Baring Funds’ shareholding in Kaspi.kz decreased from 26.13% to 24.24%. The next reduction occurred in October 2024, when Baring’s stake fell to 23.78%.
Baring Funds is controlled by Baring Private Equity, owned by American investor Michael Calvey. The company was established following the split of the Russian investment firm Baring Vostok. In addition to Kaspi.kz, Baring Private Equity also holds shares in BlaBlaCar and Kolesa.kz.
