This is a translated post by Adam Kesher from the Russian-language blog.

So, it’s official — the largest private bank of South Korea Kookmin buys 30% in the Kazakhstan’s Bank CenterCredit (BCC). The first report on the possible deal arrived in late January this year, when Korean sources were already speaking about the acquisition of 50,1%. It was reported on the meeting of the two banks’ top-managers — this fact was confirmed in Kookmin, but BCC refused to comment on this, and Kazakhstan’s Financial Authority said that it does not know anything about the deal, because the Koreans never applied for approval. 

Today Reuters reports on the deal as a fact. Kookmin will pay $634 million for its first major cross-border acquisition in nearly half a decade, aming to raise its holding to more than half of BCC over the next few years. Investors believe that buying the Kazakh banks in the situation of decline of their market value will ensure high profitability in the near perspective, taking into account high export potential of Kazakhstan . Local banks (it is a third acqusution on the Kazakh market over the recent time after Texaka-Sberbank of Russia and ATF-UniCredit) see it not only as the next stage of development, investments and technologies, but also as a way to solve the main critical problem of today — payoffs of the external borrowings.  

It is reported that part of the stake — new shares — will be bought through the local stock exchange KASE. Kookmin’s market value is $18 billion. Russian web-portal Invest-Plan already advises to buy BCC’s bonds.