BTA chairman Mukhtar Ablyazov was removed, and Arman Dunayev, the deputy chairman of Samruk-Kazyna, was appointed to the board of BTA.
Central bank governor Anwar Saidenov replaced Roman Solodchenko as chief executive.
Mr Saidenov’s replacement at the central bank is also his predecessor in the role, Grigory Marchenko. Mr Marchenko, in the meantime, had been the chief executive of another commercial bank, Halyk, in which Samruk-Kazyna recently took a minority $1bn stake.
The fund also acquired a 76% stake in the smaller Alliance Bank, and invested $980m in the country’s second largest bank, Kazkommertsbank.
Mr Marchenko immediately announced a devaluation of the Kazakh currency.
This is intended as part of the country’s measures to stem the outflow of foreign exchange reserves, but will increase the cost of foreign currency debt servicing payments for Kazakh banks, which had borrowed heavily overseas.
BTA has about $12bn in outstanding Eurobonds and foreign loans, and was in negotiations with creditors as The Banker went to press to avoid demands for early repayment based on ‘change of control’ clauses in some of its borrowing contracts.
The bank was the country’s largest lender to the non-oil sector, including heavy exposure to real estate assets and construction companies.
