OREANDA-NEWS. April 11, 2011. Joint Stock Company “Halyk Savings Bank of Kazakhstan” (the “Bank”) (LSE: HSBK) hereby announces that, following a change of law adopted in March 2011, legal entities with affiliates registered in off-shore jurisdictions or individual participants (founders/shareholders) in legal entities registered in off-shore jurisdictions are no longer prohibited from directly or indirectly owning and (or) using and (or) disposing of the voting shares of banks resident in the Republic of Kazakhstan. Consequently, it is now only legal entities registered in off-shore jurisdictions that cannot directly or indirectly own and (or) use and (or) dispose of such shares, reported the press-centre of Halyk Bank.

The relevant changes to the law are contained in point 5 of Article 17 of the Law of the Republic of Kazakhstan “On Banks and Banking Activity in the Republic of Kazakhstan” (the “Law”), effective from 1 January 2010. A list of the abovementioned off-shore jurisdictions has been approved by Resolution # 145 of the Agency of the Republic of Kazakhstan on Regulation and Supervision of Financial Market and Financial Organizations, dated 2 October 2008 (“On approval of the list of off-shore jurisdictions for the purposes of banking and insurance activities, activities of professional participants of securities market and other licensable activities on securities market, activities of pension funds and joint-stock investment funds”). This list of off-shore jurisdictions can be found in the press release published by the Bank on 19 January 2009 (http://www.halykbank.kz/files/old/Offshore%20jurisdictions_final.pdf).

Please also be aware that point 5-1 of Article 17 of the Law remains intact and requires the Bank’s shareholders, who intend to participate in the general shareholders’ meeting, to provide a statement certifying the compliance of their shareholders (participants) with the requirement stipulated in point 5 of Article 17 of the Law, in cases where the Bank holds no information on the jurisdiction of registration of such shareholders (participants).
 
Any shareholders who fail to provide such a statement will not be eligible to participate in the general shareholders’ meeting.

In cases where it is detected that the statement contains incorrect information or there has been a breach of the requirement stipulated in point 5 of Article 17 of the Law:

1)      if the majority of voting shares (except for the voting shares of the shareholder who provided the statement) voted in favour of the resolution, the resolution of the general shareholders’ meeting is considered to be adopted without the votes of this shareholder;

2)      if the vote of the shareholder who provided the statement was a decisive vote, this could be a basis to consider the resolution of the general shareholders’ meeting as invalid at the request of the competent authority or any other interested parties, in the order stipulated by legislation of the Republic of Kazakhstan.