Halkbank sale may begin by end June
Turkey may start the process of selling shares in state-owned Halkbank by the end of June, an official at the government’s asset sales agency said yesterday.
The agency is expecting a “development” in the Halkbank sale in the second quarter and is awaiting a government decision to proceed, Arzu Atik, a senior official at the agency, said at a conference in Istanbul yesterday, reported Bloomberg. The government may decide to sell its majority stake in Halkbank as a block or hold a secondary public offering to investors, she said.
Turkey sold 25 percent of Halkbank last year in the country’s biggest initial public offering, raising $1.9 billion. The financial troubles of international banks may make it hard to find a buyer for a majority stake in Halkbank this year, State Minister for the Economy Mehmet Şimşek said in an April 4 interview.
Halkbank, together with Vakıfbank, one of the leading “multi-specialist” banks in Turkey, provided $750 million in loans to Çalık Holding for the purchase of Turkey’s second-largest media group, Sabah-atv. The loan portfolio of Halkbank, which became operational in 1938, is worth $17 billion.
source: Turkish Daily News
Tags: privatization