Head of Sberbank subsidiary in Kazakhstan standing down

NUR-SULTAN. July 1 (Interfax) - The head of Sberbank's subsidiary in Kazakhstan, Eldar Tenizbayev, is resigning.

The subsidiary's press office said Nursultan Tskaranov would be acting CEO while a replacement is found.

Tenizbayev had worked at the bank for 10 years, heading it in January 2020.

Sberbank expects to close the sale of its subsidiary in Kazakhstan by July 5-10, the lender's first deputy CEO Alexander Vedyakhin told Interfax earlier. The main contender for the Kazakh subsidiary of Sberbank is Kazakhstan's Baiterek, he said.

The Kazakhstan-based subsidiaries of the Russian banks VTB , Alfa-Bank and Sberbank were added to the U.S. sanctions list in March of this year. Kazakhstan's Bank CenterCredit completed the acquisition of 100% of Alfa-Bank's subsidiary in Kazakhstan in May 2022. The subsidiaries of Sberbank and VTB in Kazakhstan have been looking for investors. Sberbank sees heightened interest among of investors from different countries in this asset, Timur Kozintsev, Sberbank's senior vice president and head of Sberbank International, said in May.

The United States imposed blocking sanctions on Sberbank on April 6. They stipulate a freeze on assets in the U.S. and a ban on U.S. citizens carrying out operations with the bank.

The U.S. sanctions lists also included a number of Sberbank Group companies, including subsidiary banks in Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and Belarus, as well as Sberbank Europe AG, whose European authorities earlier decided to bankrupt it.

The Sberbank subsidiaries ranked seventh by assets among the 22 second-tier banks operating in Kazakhstan as of May 1, 2022, according to the National Bank.