Kazakhstan’s Bank of Astana (Astana Banki) plans to conduct a secondary offering of shares (SPO) on the Moscow Stock Exchange, RNS news agency reported last week. Bidding will begin on December 14. It will mark the first placement of shares by a foreign bank on the bourse, the report said.

Standard & Poor's (S&P) Ratings Services placed its 'B/B' long- and short-term counterparty credit ratings and 'kzBB' Kazakhstan national scale rating on Bank of Astana on CreditWatch negative in April. The action reflected the “materially reduced capitalisation of Bank of Astana at year-end 2015, a delay in the planned capital injection until later in 2016, and uncertainty about whether the bank will be able to restore its capitalisation and maintain it at strong levels in 2016-2017”.

A roadshow on December 4 revealed a placement price of RUB215 (€3.08) per share with plans to place 2.88mn shares for a total of RUB619.59mn, the report noted.

"These shares amount to slightly less than 8% of the bank's share capital," Timur Turlov, the head of Russian broker firm IR Freedom Finance, said.

The current capitalisation of the bank is estimated at RUB6.539bn, while its securities in free float stand at 40.35%, according to the report.

"About 30mn shares have been issued; about 40% are in free float," Iskander Malibayev, the bank's chairman, said.

The lender was founded in 2008. The bank’s main shareholder and chairman of the board of directors, Olzhas Tokhtarov, gained a stake in the bank in 2013.  

Bank of Astana’s assets are estimated at RUB60.9bn; its own capital amounts to RUB7.4bn; around half of the bank’s assets belong to legal entities (RUB26.95bn), according to figures cited by the report.