Freedom Holdings eyes Hong Kong’s dim sum bond market to fund Kazakh optic-fibre project

One of Kazakhstan’s biggest privately owned conglomerates is looking to Hong Kong’s capital market to finance a multimillion dollar infrastructure project by its telecoms unit, underscoring the city’s growing status as a fundraising hub for the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

Freedom Holdings, the top Kazakh retail brokerage and investment bank, has engaged China International Capital Corp. (CICC) to help it sell so-called dim sum bonds, or financial instruments denominated in offshore renminbi, said the company’s founder and chief executive Timur Turlov. The Almaty-based company may also consider an initial public offering (IPO) in the future, he said.

“[What] brought us to Hong Kong [is to] raise financing for our telecommunications strategy,” Turlov said in an interview with the Post, between meetings with the Hong Kong stock exchange and the Securities and Futures Commission.

“Renminbi interest rate is lower than the US dollar’s rate and we will need this renminbi to pay Huawei” and ZTE Corp. for the Chinese companies’ euipment for fitting out its telecoms strategy, he said.

The company’s telecoms unit Freedom Telecom plans to spend 107 billion tenge (US$236 million) over three years until the end of 2027 on two projects in Kazakhstan: a so-called “hyper highway” for 17 billion tenge that would send data across 3,100 kilometres from the country’s west to the east, and a 90-billion tenge Tier III data centre.