Amid the numerous problems caused by the coronavirus pandemics and its consequences such as the imposing of the emergency rule, the quarantines and the «freezing» of the economy, the successful listing of Kazatomprom’s shares and GDRs has turned out to be a pleasant news.
Of course, we were greatly surprised by the fact that NWF Samruk-Kazyna (the company’s majority shareholder) has chosen to take such a bold move given today’s extremely complex and unsure investment climate.
However, now we have received an explanation for this bravery.
Let us start by saying that this is but an opinion (that some may even find fantastical). Still, we believe it fully explains why the country’s biggest quasi-governmental holding whose management council is chaired by no other than the First President of the Republic of Kazakhstan and the «Leader of the Nation» Nursultan Nazarbayev acted the way it did.
But first, here are some facts.
The public learned about Samruk-Kazyna’s plans, as the majority shareholder of Kazatomprom JSC, to list the company’s shares and GDRs on June 2, 2020. With that, the listing itself was scheduled for both June 2 and June 3 and was held successfully. Of course, we as any other casual observer were surprised by the hastiness and the secrecy of the operation: they announced it on June 2 and completed it on June 2-3, 2020, having restricted investors from accessing it.
Here is the data on the listing provided by the Kapital.kz Centre of Business Information (text in bold by kz.expert).
«Joint-Stock Company «Welfare National Fund Samruk-Kazyna» has sold 6,28% of its Kazatomprom shares for 206 $ mln», reports the company’s press-service.
«Given the current market conditions as well as the the positive growth of the price of Kazatomprom’s shares, the Fund has made a decision to complete the governmental order and offer to place 6,28% of the shares (shares and GDRs) at the LSE and AIX (Astana International Financial Centre)», says the press-service.
The Fund has invited international and local institutional investors to participate in the accelerated book-building after the closing of the market on June 2, 2020. The Fund is to continue assembling the requisitions at the AIX on June 3.
«We have received 460 $ mln worth of requisitions and satisfied 206 $ worth of them. The volume of the requisitions from institutional investors has surpass the offer by 2.2 times. The AIX has received 69.7 $ mln worth of requisitions: 53,4% from local and 46.65 from foreign investors. As a result, for the international and Kazakh investors, the price of the listing has constituted 13 $ per GDR or 5 230.81 tenges per share», informs the press-service».
These extremely strange facts make us assume the the 6,28% shares of Kazatomprom JSC that had been sold to Samruk-Kazyna in such a hasty and secret manner primarily at the LSE (their bulk, at least) were intended for a concrete buyer. In our opinion, this buyer is no other than the clan of Dariga Nazarbayeva, the Leader of the Nation’s eldest daughter who, on May 2, 2020, vacated the chair of the Head of the Kazakh Senate.
Let us remind you that, after President Kossym-Jomart Tokayev had unset Mrs. Nazarbayeva, she showed no resistance, demanded no public satisfaction. One must agree that this kind of passivity is not in Dariga Nazarbayeva’s nature and goes against the existing practice of sustaining the balance of power in the Kazakh ruling elite when the dismissal of very powerful figures is somehow always compensated.
For this reason, we assume that a part of Kazatomprom’s shares listed on June 2, 2020, serves as a moral compensation for Dariga Nazarbayeva. At the same time, it is helping her to partially solve the problems related to her assets abroad, in particular, in the UK.
In this article, we are not going to address this subject, so we simply recommend that you read the following materials: How the US Is Trying to Contain the Flow of Dirty Money , Dariga Nazarbayeva, Unset, Tip of an Iceberg, The Nazarbayevs Retain London Mansions (texts available in Russian).
These and many other articles in the foreign press clearly show that the clan of the Elbasy’s eldest daughter and grandson has lately been experiencing problems with the billions of dollars previously moved to Western banks. So, if 6,28% of Kazatomprom’s shares (or their biggest part) have really ended up in the hands of this clan, then several problems have now been solved with a single blow.
First, Dariga Nazarbayeva and Nurali Aliyev have removed a couple of million dollars from the UK regulators’ and secret services’ zone of action and, de-facto returned the money to Kazakhstan where it will be safe for now;
second, hid this fact from the public and the press;
third, satisfied their old interest in Kazatomprom JSC, a company with rather good business prospects, by obtaining a decent stock of shares in it (their previous attempts to do so in this sector made since the the time of Rakhat Aliyev is a subject of a separate research);
fourth, the Kazakh government has demonstrated to the people and the investors that the country’s stock market is, allegedly, alive;
fifths, the management of NWF Samruk-Kazyna has completed «The Complex Privatisation Plan for 2016-2020»;
sixth, the National Fund of the Republic of Kazakhstan has received a serious support in the amount of 206 $ mln or a just a little less if the listing expenses are to be detracted.
One must agree that, given such weighty results of Akorda and the Library’s special operation, the offered explanation is worth considering.
