Kazakh supervisory bodies issued a banking licence to MASTERBANK. The bank is 100% owned by Igor Kim, a key shareholder in Russia’s URSA bank and chairman of its board. This is Kim’s first foreign project. Kim cited the project as his own business, in no way linked with the URSA bank. According to the banker, MASTERBANK will act as an independent universal bank, serving projects by Russian and Kazakh companies. The bank has a capital of two billion tenge, or over R400 million. Russian banks always have difficulty entering the Kazakh financial sector, even though international institutions deem it one of the most developed within the CIS. Experts say that the current liquidity shortfalls in Kazakhstan may facilitate access to the sector for Russian banks.
Source: WWW.KOMMERSANT.RU, October 1, 2007
