OREANDA-NEWS. September 16, 2014. Kazkommertsbank, one of the largest banks in Kazakhstan and Central Asia (“the Bank”), announces the completion of the buyback of the second part of common shares under the Option Agreement with respect to JSC Kazkommertsbank as of 15 January 2009 signed between JSC NWF Samruk-Kazyna, JSC Central-Asian Investment Company, Mr. N.S. Subkhanberdin and JSC Alnair Capital Holding (the “Option Agreement”). The buyback was announced on 22 July 2014.

As a result of the buyback, the Bank will purchase 30,676,656 common shares, of which 1,676,656 common shares will be bought back from the minority shareholders (holders of common shares and Global Depositary Receipts (GDRs)) and 29,000,000 common shares from JSC Samruk-Kazyna. The largest shareholders of the Bank did not participate in the buyback.

Therefore, the Bank continued to return government funding allocated to purchase common shares of the Bank under the government anti-crisis programme in 2009. At that time NWF Samruk-Kazyna purchased 165,517,241 common shares of the Bank for 36 billion tenge at a price of 217.5 tenge per one common share. The Option Agreement allowed the Bank and its major shareholders to buy back common shares from Samruk-Kazyna within several years.

As a result of the first and second parts of buyback, the Bank will return more than 38 billion tenge to Samruk-Kazyna (payment for 80,000,000 common shares at a price of 475.3667 tenge per common share).

The minority shareholders held 54,957,296 common shares when the buyback offer was announced, and almost half of their holdings have been submitted for the first and the second parts of the buyback. As a result, the number of the Bank’s common shares in free float will be reduced.

Following the completion of the second offer, the Bank will notify the London Stock Exchange ("LSE") and the Kazakh Stock Exchange ("KASE") on reduced free-float and will make further announcements with regards to the decisions of the stock exchanges.