It is difficult, in front of the imposing glass and steel ball placed on a vast esplanade, not to think of the Death Star, the Moon-shaped combat station of the saga Star Wars. All around, large circular buildings sparkle in the October sun, giving the whole place a futuristic look. This is where in 2017, the Kazakh capital, Astana, built on oil money, held its major international exhibition, meant to show the world the modern face of Kazakhstan.
This is also where, in the process, the country set up its new financial center – the Astana International Financial Center (AIFC) – bringing together a brand new stock exchange, a financial regulator, a start-up incubator, a series of financial services, close to the Ministry of Digital Development and a university focused on new technologies. Its ambition is not small: to initiate a diversification of the economy, ultra-dependent on hydrocarbons, and to open the country to international finance to support its growth.
It must be said that the former Soviet republic has come a long way. Its first stock exchange, KASE (Kazakhstan Stock Exchange), was created in 1993, on the remnants of Soviet regulations, with strong state involvement. « The new Stock Exchange born in 2018, Astana International Exchange [AIX]operates under UK law and the standards to which international investors are accustomed”, explains Renat Bekturov, its CEO. All inspired by the way Dubai has become an international financial center over the past twenty years. Officially, no trace of the State in the capital: the Nasdaq, the Shanghai Stock Exchange, Goldman Sachs and the Silk Road Fund, a Chinese investment fund, are the shareholders of AIX.
In an attempt to make people forget their bad score at the ranking of the NGO Transparency International on corruption (102e place out of 180 countries in 2021), Kazakhstan has also created an independent court of justice and an international chamber of arbitration, responsible for defending the interests of investors. They are largely made up of reputable foreign judges, such as Jonathan Mance, a former deputy chief justice of the United Kingdom. “In five years, we have revolutionized the country’s judicial practices and established confidence in the place of Astana”boasts Christopher Campbell-Holt, its managing director, an inexhaustible Briton who passed through the New York bar.
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