India's Punjab National Bank takes over Kazakhstan's Danabank
ALMATY. Feb 8 (Interfax) - India's Punjab National Bank has taken control over Kazakh commercial bank Danabank with an acquisition deal signed Monday in Almaty, an Interfax correspondent reported.
Signatories to the deal documents were Punjab National's Nagesh Pydah, head of the Indian bank's offices in Kazakhstan Farid Akhtar, Danabank board of directors chair Beket Kopbosynov, board of directors chair at Investment Company BATT (Danabank's main shareholder) Timur Kuanyshev and co-chair Alfiya Kuanysheva.
The parties to the deal neither revealed the size of the Danabank stake Punjab National Bank has acquired nor the price tag. "It was a large amount. The deal was done with an additional issue," Kuanyshev said. It had been reported earlier that the Indian bank was looking at a 64% stake in the Kazakh bank with an eye to increasing its Central Asian presence.
Kuanyshev said that Danabank would be remained in the near future. The proposed new designation is PNB-Kazakhstan. According to agreements between shareholders, Danabank will join the ranks of Kazakhstan's top-10 banks in the next three to five years.
He added that PNB regards its presence in Kazakhstan as ground for expansion in the CIS. "If PNB has interest in going to other CIS markets, the Kazakh bank will be the starting base [for this]," he said.
The executive director of PNB, Nagesh Pydah, said that the Kazakh subsidiary would be integrated in the parent bank's international operations in order to perform bilateral and multilateral transactions. He said that PNB's involvement in Danabank would present international experience and modern banking technologies in the Kazakh banking sector.
Danabank ended H1 2009 in 966th place by assets among CIS banks and 33rd among Kazakhstan's on the Interfax-1000 ranking.