From the latest statements of Daniyar Akishev, Head of the National Bank of Kazakhstan, and Umut Shayakhmetova, Chair of Halyk Bank, including the ones made at the Congress of the Kazakhstan financiers, it seems that Kazkommertsbank, thanks to the generous help of Akorda, has been saved and is no longer the authorities’ headache.

 One could perhaps congratulate the “recue” team had it not been for one awkward issue. The thing is that, after the control of Kazkommertsbank had been given to Halyk Bank for just two tenges, the Kazakhstan banking system got an organization closely reminiscent of a monopoly.

To confirm our observation, we will cite the official statistics of the National Bank of Kazakhstan taken from a table called “Information on the Capital, Liabilities, and Assets” of the commercial banks as of November 1, 2017.

The table shows that the Halyk Bank group that, apart from the bank itself, includes Kazkom and Altyn Bank, occupies the top position in the banking sector. Its share of the assets constitutes 34%, the share of the load portfolio constitutes 29.3%, its share of the liabilities constitutes 35.6%, its share of the physical bodies’ deposits constitutes 38%, that of the legal bodies constitutes 36.7% which, be far, exceeds the 30% mark that is one of the indicators of the monopoly standing of a company.

In other words, thanks to Akorda’s generous gift, the privately-owned Halyk Bank, from a systemic financial institution, has been transformed into a supra-systemic one. So, now, the bank and its majority shareholders Dinara and Timur Kulibayevs (Nursultan Nazarbayev’s daughter and son-in-law) will not only receive the additional dividends thanks to the bank’s dominating position at the market but also count on the further unconditional support from Akorda.