Azerbaijan keeps its options open

Kazakhs with their backs to the wall

Inside the Uzbek citadel

“We would be very bullish on Azeri financial markets, if any existed,” says Gulhan Ovalioglu at Istanbul-based specialists Global Securities. Despite its potential oil revenues and a putative privatization programme, Azerbaijan, doesn’t have any capital markets to speak of, accept for a thinly traded T-bill market. The only other traded instruments are privatization vouchers and so-called options on them.

Investors have been waiting since July last year for a stock exchange to be created but have been frustrated by the crawling pace of the privatization programme.