OREANDA-NEWS.  InterContinental Hotel - The Ankara in Kazakhstan, Almaty, hosted a regular meeting of representatives of the banking and financial world community. Bank TuranAlem arranged the VIII Almaty Interbanking Conference.

"Seeing once is better than hearing twice," this is how arrangers of the I Almaty Interbanking Conference reasoned in 2000 when they decided to convene bankers and financiers from the CIS countries for the first time. Now it is a good tradition for representatives of the banking and financial community to meet in Almaty every year.

Almaty Interbanking Conference is a two-day marathon of exchange of ideas, concepts and methods intended to enable free communication, discussion, statements by financiers and bankers. The conference aims to create a springboard for a rapid professional advancement of all its participants. More and more financial analysts, auditors, treasurers, banking experts attend the event from year to year. It is planned that this year the conference will gather a record high number of participants and guests, almost 500 participants from nearly 30 countries.

Role of the banking system of Kazakhstan and some its players in the CIS is enhanced year after year. And this has conditioned the topic of the VIII Almaty Interbanking Conference "Rapidly Growing Banking Systems of the CIS." The participants of the conference will assess risks in the banking sector, study market capitals and discuss competitive advantages of dominant stock exchanges, sift successful models of introduction of Islamic banking worldwide and opportunity of the Islamic banking in Kazakhstan and the CIS countries, to study problems with retail lending and perspectives of uniting of banking systems on post soviet area.

Meanwhile, the leitmotif of the upcoming Almaty Interbanking Conference was the first session of a organizational committee of the Eurasian Club of Bankers (ECB). BTA being a major privately-owned financial institute in the CIS backs up the initiative of President of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbayev to create the Eurasian Club of Bankers.

BTA chief executives believe participants of the financial market in Eurasian countries should enhance their cooperation thus enabling tackling strategic tasks faced by their governments and the integration potential to the full extent. ECB activities will facilitate essential multilateral economic cooperation.

JSC "Bank TuranAlem" is among biggest banks and leader in creation of banking network in CIS. Group’s consolidated assets soared from $16.3 billion at the end of 2006 reaching $24 billion as of July 1, 2007, balance equity capital almost doubled from $1.53 billion to $2.97 billion.

BTA operating in the CIS and far-abroad countries is expanding into the CIS countries. Activities of its strategic bank partners cover Ukraine, 4 regions in Russia, Belarus, Georgia, Armenia, Kyrgyzstan and Turkey. BTA runs its representative offices in Russia, Ukraine, China and the United Arab Emirates.

In Kazakhstan, BTA’s network consists of 22 branches and 256 cash settlement units.
Bank TuranAlem is recognized as "Bank of the Year 2006 in CIS" by "Itogi" finance magazine. Meanwhile, Euromoney named BTA "A Leading Bank in Corporate Governance in Emerging Europe 2006" BTA also appears in the Banker’s TOP 300 rating and ranks the third in its Highest Movers of the Year.