Samruk-Kazyna mulls dividing its affiliated companies into public and non-public

Samruk-Kazyna mulls dividing its affiliated companies into public and non-public. The suggestion was made by the independent director of KazTransGas Zhanna Berdalina at the meeting of independent directors of Samruk-Kazyna group of companies with the Fund's chairman Umirzak Shukeyev. "Just recently the Law On joint-stock companies divided such companies in two types: open and closed. We believe that the fund has to come up with an initiative and go back to what we had before. But amid the current situation it will be better to talk about public and non-public joint-stock companies. That's why there is a suggestion to amend the joint-stock companies law or the Fund law. This issue still has to be reviewed by the lawyers," Berdalina suggested. According to her, currently over 70 percent of companies of Samruk-Kazyna are JSCs. The rest are LLPs. She noted that division into two types of companies will ease up the work inside the companies and the Fund. "All these requirements of JSCs will be applied to public joint-stock companies, i.e. to the companies where the Fund has initiated the People's IPO. As for the non-public companies, the Fund needs such form of companies to simplify the management mechanism. Even if the Fund chooses to have a non-public JSC, the work of the board will be simplified. This will allow the Fund or its shareholders and participants to define the management system," independent director of KazTransGas said. According to chairman of Samruk-Kazyna Umirzak Shukeyev, the Fund does not need to have so many joint-stock companies. "In fact, our Fund has over 500 companies and all of them not necessarily have to be joint-stock companies. JSC status requires creation of a board of directors and we cannot find so many independent directors and human resources. Plus their range of activities could easily fit into the LLP status," Shukeyev said. By Aidana Ussupova