OREANDA-NEWS On 09 September was announced, that Managing Director of BTA Bank Timur Sabyrbayev and Chief Executive Officer of Subsidiary Bank, Bank of China Kazakhstan JSC Mr. Tian Wei sealed a cooperation agreement to bolster international business and open a correspondent account.

This document opens up new opportunities for clients of BTA Bank. Now remittances to China from Kazakhstan via BTA Bank will take only one day instead of three.

"For such dynamic and successful market participant as BTA Bank JSC, a desire to expand its international activities and thus facilitate interests and business of its clients is natural. In this case we follow a strategic plan to access the market of China. Signing this document with Bank of China is a milestone in the implementation of the chosen strategy," Mr Sabyrbayev underlined.

BTA Bank views the Chinese market as the most promising one for its long-term international cooperation given the development trends of trade and economic interaction as well as the financial sector of China.

BTA Bank is among biggest banks in the CIS with an extensive banking chain. BTA consolidated assets as of April 1, 2008 totaled 3,164 billion tenge (USD 26.2 billion), a 3% year-on-year increase, capital grew by 2.1% up to 463 billion tenge (USD 3.8 billion). BTA consolidated net income in the first quarter of 2008 made 15.6 billion tenge (USD 129 million), 25% more compared to the similar period of last year.

BTA strategic partner banks operate in Ukraine, four regions of Russia, Belarus, Georgia, Armenia, Kyrgyzstan and Turkey. BTA Bank also runs representative offices in Russia, Ukraine, China and the United Arab Emirates.

BTA Bank operates a broad regional network throughout Kazakhstan (22 branches and 274 cash settlement centers) and a biggest chain of ATMs, cash and pay terminals (160). It services more than 1.2 million individual and 100,000 corporate clients.

This year BTA appears in The Banker’s TOP 200. In 2006 and 2007 reputed Itogi magazine named BTA Bank ‘The Best CIS Bank’ and Euromoney declared it ‘The Best Bank in Central Asia.’ The Europe Business Assembly (EBA, Oxford, UK) named BTA ‘the Best Enterprise of Europe’ in the Eurasian banking sector in 2007.

With assets worth over USD 700 billion and capital of USD 40 billion Bank of China ranks among ten top banks in the world. It runs more than 13,000 units throughout China and 550 representative offices in 25 countries. Overall Bank of China has 210,000 employees. Bank of China Kazakhstan was set up in 1993.