Kazakh head tells wealth fund to sell stakes in 3 banks

ALMATY Feb 4 (Reuters) - Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev told the national wealth fund on Monday to sell state-owned stakes in local bank BTA, Alliance Bank and Temirbank by the end of this year, the presidential news service said.

"We will brisk up this process," Yelena Bakhmutova, deputy head of Samruk-Kazyna fund, told Reuters. "No one had said publicly before that we are ready to sell (the stakes) ... Now this order has been made," she said. "We are ready to talk to potential investors." (Reporting by Mariya Gordeyeva; writing by Dmitry Solovyov; editing by Keiron Henderson)