"Kazakhstan’s a big country with big prospects," says Adel Kambar, chief executive of Renaissance Capital’s central Asian operation in Almaty. He adds: "We still get investors from New York and London travelling here – nobody’s forgotten Kazakhstan, it’s still on a lot of people’s radar screens."
While acknowledging that in the foreseeable future there’s unlikely to be a return to the large-scale public share and bond issuance that propelled Kazakhstan to centre stage in the international capital markets in recent years, Kambar says that there’s still plenty of investment banking work to be done.
| "We still get investors from Adel Kambar, |
Alongside advising local businesses there is also work from the authorities in the capital, Astana. Renaissance recently secured a high-profile mandate from the National Welfare Fund, Samruk-Kazyna, to help it establish and operate its Distressed Assets Fund, which will restructure problem banking assets. Elsewhere, Stefan Scholz, head of investment banking at rival firm Visor Capital and recently returned from a recruitment drive in London, says that the fallout from the global crisis on the investment banking industry means that firms such as his, which have a strong pipeline of deals, are increasingly seen as an attractive option for highly experienced professionals seeking to escape the dole queue in western Europe and the US.