Eurasian Bank to issue $200-300m bonds

Eurasian Bank, one of Kazakhstan's top 10 lenders, plans to issue Eurobonds and rouble bonds worth $200-$300 million this year. "I expect that we will look to the rouble market maybe in the first half of this year and the Eurobond market maybe in the last quarter of this year," chief executive Michael Eggleton told reporters on Tuesday.

The bank had not yet decided on the duration of the planned issues or the split between Eurobonds and rouble bonds, he said. Kazakhstan's banking sector was among the first and hardest hit by the global financial crisis and is only now beginning to recover as growth picks up and several banks emerge from lengthy debt restructuring programmes. Eurasian Bank's main shareholders are billionaire entrepreneurs Alexander Mashkevich, Patokh Chodiev and Alijan Ibragimov, the founders of Kazakh mining giant ENRC. In an interview with Reuters in October, Eggleton said he expected Eurasian Bank to issue domestic bonds worth 15-30 billion tenge ($103-$206 million) in 2011, and the bank did not rule out the possibility of a Eurobond issue.