Bereke Bank has undergone a name change. The financial institution will now be known as JSC Bereke Bank (a subsidiary of Lesha Bank LLC (Public)).
The decision was made by the sole shareholder of Bereke Bank on January 9, 2025. Along with the name adjustment, a new version of the bank's charter will be approved, changes will be made to the corporate governance code, and the regulations regarding the board of directors will be updated.
It is worth noting that Qatar's Lesha Bank became the sole shareholder of Bereke Bank in October 2024, marking the completion of the sale of the financial institution after several months of negotiations. In the summer of 2022, Bereke Bank—then still a subsidiary of Russia's Sberbank—was sold to the Baiterek holding (the parties signed the sale agreement in August 2022) due to the Russian "parent" Sberbank being subjected to Western sanctions. The Kazakh bank was being removed from under these sanctions, and in March 2023, Bereke Bank—by that time already renamed—received a notification from the U.S. Department of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control about its removal from the SDN list. Concurrently, the interim shareholder was seeking a new owner for the financial asset. In February 2024, Lesha Bank and Baiterek entered into a preliminary agreement "regarding the potential acquisition of the entire joint-stock bank in the Republic of Kazakhstan." In May 2024, the Qatari buyer announced that the parties had concluded a purchase agreement for the bank, which took place in March, with the transaction amounting to 65 billion tenge.
As of December 1, 2024, Bereke Bank ranked tenth in market assets according to the consolidated table from the National Bank, with an indicator of 2.35 trillion tenge. The loan portfolio of the bank at that date amounted to 1.39 trillion tenge, individual deposits totaled 599.2 billion tenge, and legal entity deposits reached 792.2 billion tenge.
Lesha Bank, previously known as Qatar First Bank, is an investment bank operating under Sharia law, authorized by the Qatari regulator (QFCRA) and listed on the Qatar Stock Exchange.