Marchenko previously served as NBK chairman from October 1999 until 2004 and was widely viewed as having played a leading role in the transformation of the fortunes of the central Asian country’s banking sector. Under his watch, Kazakhstan went from a near-bankrupt state in the wake of the August 1998 Russian financial crisis to being one of the most stable and profitable in the entire central and eastern European region – an achievement that won him widespread acclaim and comparisons to Alan Greenspan.
The former US Federal Reserve chairman’s star has waned dramatically in the light of the US sub-prime mortgage fiasco but Marchenko’s reputation as a canny operator has been strengthened by his stewardship of Kazakhstan’s third-biggest financial institution, Halyk Bank, where he served as chairman from January 2005. Although many of Halyk’s rivals embarked on a Eurobond issuance binge to finance rapid expansion, a strategy that has come back to haunt them in the wake of the global credit crunch, Marchenko adopted a much more prudent stance and concentrated on bolstering Halyk Bank’s deposit base. As a result, Halyk is viewed as the country’s strongest commercial bank in the post-credit crunch environment, albeit that the government is about to take a stake in it and its big local rivals as part of a broader economic rescue plan.