Feb. 2 (Bloomberg) -- Kazakhstan may sell half of the controlling stake it’s buying in BTA Bank, the Central Asian country’s biggest lender, to Russia’s OAO Sberbank, as it seeks to increase liquidity amid the global credit crunch.

The Kazakh government “doesn’t have any extra money” to invest in BTA, Arman Dunayev, deputy head of the state’s National Wellbeing Fund Samruk-Kazyna, told reporters in the financial capital Almaty today. The fund will pay BTA 251 billion tenge ($2.1 billion) for 78.14 percent of the bank’s shares, and deposit 212 billion tenge of that total in the bank today or tomorrow, he said.

A deal with Sberbank would be “mutually profitable,” given that BTA has a “significant part of its assets in Russia,” Dunayev said, adding that talks on the stake sale will begin today in Astana. Spokeswoman Irina Kibina said Sberbank had received the Kazakh offer and was considering it. She declined to elaborate.

Prime Minister Karim Masimov announced a $4 billion bank bailout in November, part of a planned 2.2 trillion tenge in spending, almost 20 percent of gross domestic product, to prevent the economy from contracting. The government will take $10 billion from the National Oil Fund, created to guard against a decline in crude oil prices.

Gref Visit

Kazakhstan may try to sell BTA shares to Sberbank at a profit, as it acquired them at a large discount, Milena Ivanova- Venturini, an Almaty-based analyst at Renaissance Capital, said by telephone.

Sberbank chief German Gref held talks with Masimov in Astana last month on combining resources in a bid to dictate prices on some world markets.

BTA Bank will begin talks with creditors “in a few days” in a bid to stave off calls for early debt repayment, Chief Executive Officer Roman Solodchenko said.

Mukhtar Ablyazov, co-owner of Russian developer Eurasia Logistics, was ousted as chairman of BTA’s board of directors, because his “actions were found to be inconsistent with the interests of depositors and creditors and with current law,” the government said on its Web site.

Alliance Deal

Ablyazov, a former energy minister and opposition leader, quit politics after President Nursultan Nazarbayev pardoned him in 2003 after a conviction on corruption charges, according to Transparency Kazakhstan.

The National Wellbeing Fund, the primary conduit for the state’s bank rescue program, is also considering the purchase of 76 percent of London-traded Alliance Bank, the nation’s fourth- largest, for 100 tenge from Seimar Alliance Financial Corporation, which owns 81.7 percent of the bank, the prime minister’s office said on its Web site.

The fund agreed to deposit about $200 million in Alliance through the end of this year, bank Chief Executive Officer Erik Sultankulov said, adding that no “written agreement” had been signed on what the government might do with the money after it has been deposited.

“If we knew that the crisis would end this year, Seimar Alliance would have made a different decision,” Chief Executive Officer Saken Seifullin told reporters in Almaty.

Alliance shareholders, “realizing that they can’t maintain the bank’s capitalization and financial stability indefinitely, decided to sell a stake to the government for a symbolic price,” without an option to repurchase them, he said.

Trading Halt

Trading of shares in BTA and Alliance was halted last week by the Kazakhstan Stock Exchange as investors dumped the stocks. The government’s move to buy the BTA stake came after the Agency for Financial Supervision on Jan. 29 ordered the lender to increase cash reserves by 400 billion tenge, Solodchenko said.

Kazakhstan’s 37 banks saw profit plunge 93 percent to 15.4 billion tenge last year from the same period a year earlier as they set aside cash to cover bad loans, the Agency for Financial Supervision said on Jan. 23.

The National Wellbeing Fund agreed on Jan. 29 to deposit $1 billion into both Kazkommertsbank and Halyk Savings Bank, the country’s second- and third-largest lenders. The government said in October it intended to buy 25 percent stakes in the four biggest banks.

Halyk is majority owned by Nazarbayev’s daughter and son- in-law, Timur Kulibayev, who was appointed deputy head of the National Wellbeing Fund on Oct. 17.

For Related News and Information: Stories on Kazakhstan banks: TNI KAZAKH BNK <GO> Top financial services stories: TOP FIN <GO>

Last Updated: February 2, 2009 06:16 EST