Turkish Forum

Category: Business

  • Turkey Plans $2 Billion Samurai Bond Sales, JBIC Says

    Turkey Plans $2 Billion Samurai Bond Sales, JBIC Says

    By Takako Taniguchi and Steve Bryant – Nov 26, 2010 2:11 PM GMT+0100

    Turkey plans to sell $2 billion of Samurai bonds partly guaranteed by the Japan Bank for International Cooperation as it gathers advance financing for next year’s budget.

    The proposed sales will be made by the end of this year, Hiroshi Watanabe, chief executive officer of the state-run Japanese bank, known as JBIC, told a press conference today in Tokyo. The Treasury said work on a sale was “advanced” and declined to give a size or date for the offer, according to an answer to Bloomberg questions provided by the press office.

    Turkey has sold $6.7 billion in foreign debt this year, meeting its goal for 2010 and drawing $695 million in pre- financing for the 2011 budget, according to the Treasury. The country expects an increase to its credit ratings after parliamentary elections in June next year, Finance Minister Mehmet Simsek said in London on Nov. 23.

    The country has been in talks with Japan all year on a possible Samurai offering, the first since November 2000, when Turkey raised 50 billion yen ($544 million) in three-year notes.

    The Treasury said last month it expects to raise 12.5 billion liras ($8.9 billion) in external financing for the 2011 budget. That figure includes payments from international lenders such as the World Bank and the European Investment Bank. It didn’t give a target for foreign bond sales.

    Rating

    Fitch Ratings on Nov. 24 revised the outlook on Turkey’s BB+ local and foreign-currency bond rating to positive from stable, citing a strong economic recovery and improving public finances.

    The Fitch rating is one step below investment grade. Moody’s Investors Service raised the outlook on Turkey’s Ba2 rating, two levels below investment, to positive from stable on Oct. 5. Standard & Poor’s ranks Turkey an equivalent BB.

    Turkey aims for a budget deficit of 33.5 billion liras in 2011, or about 2.8 percent of gross domestic product, according to the government’s medium-term plans. The deficit this year is forecast at 4 percent of GDP.

    To contact the reporters on this story: Steve Bryant in Ankara at [email protected]; Takako Taniguchi in Tokyo at [email protected]

    To contact the editor responsible for this story: Peter Hirschberg in Jerusalem at [email protected]

  • Turkish president, Gül, wants more Swiss investment

    Turkish president, Gül, wants more Swiss investment

    The Turkish president, Abdullah Gül, wants to see more Swiss businesses investing in his country.

    Speaking to journalists in Zurich after meeting some 20 businessmen on the second day of his official visit to Switzerland, he said Turkey had a solid infrastructure, with important oil and gas pipelines, and was a hub between Europe and Asia.

    Gerold Bührer, president of the Swiss Business Federation, economiesuisse, told the Swiss news agency that the talks with the Turkish representatives had been positive.

    Turkey offers particularly attractive investment opportunities for Swiss chemical and pharmaceutical companies, he said.

    Gül said more than 450 Swiss enterprises were already active in Turkey, and he hoped that more would come.

    “We are doing our best to create the necessary framework for that,” he said.

    Swiss President Doris Leuthard noted that Switzerland would like to strengthen economic ties with the country.

    The Turkish leader also took part in a forum on cleantech and went on a boat tour of Lake Zurich on Friday.

    swissinfo.ch and agencies

  • Tying up the home network

    Tying up the home network

    Julian Clover reports from Istanbul where manufacturer AirTies is launching itself onto the European stage.

    clovers weekThere are probably two types of set-top box manufacturers, those who develop new products for the market, and those who don’t. Curiously the latter category can sit at either end of the price scale and can either be the pile ’em high, sell ’em cheap brigade that fill supermarket shelves or those who exclusively concentrate their efforts on the shopping list given them by the pay-TV providers.

    But not all pay-TV platforms are created equal and the smaller operators that don’t necessarily have the market power still need the technologies to keep themselves on a par with those that do. It is a niche that has clearly been identified by ADB, Netgem, and the Turkish manufacturer AirTies, which this week held open house in Istanbul.

    CEO Bülent Çelebi is aware of the limitations of the marketplace: “This will shift next year, but right now our business is almost 50/50 retail versus operator.” Çelebi says he sees a significant opportunity in the free-to-air market even as telcos enter full deployment. He accepts that FTA might end up requiring separate integrations for each of the markets it deploys in. “When we first started out we realised that EMEA would require customisation on a per market basis.”

    Çelebi makes the point that the individual intricacies of each market make it more difficult for the likes of Apple to offer a homogenised service.

    With a product range that also includes DSL routers and a whole range of wireless connectivity products it should come as no surprise that over-the-top is also a part of the AirTies mix. Looking forward one wonders if the standard DTT box in every market will involve some sort of hybrid connectivity.

    For now platforms, aware of the threat of Google and Apple TV (if only in the matter of how many column inches they take up), are using the Ethernet ports that have previously lain unused. So long has this been the case that no one actually seems to have thought of actually connecting them to the internet.

    AirTies has produced a range of wireless media connectors that connect any DLNA-enabled device to the internet, solving the problem where the device is at one end of the room and the internet port at the other. MicroP has been appointed as UK distributor and it is likely the product will be introduced in other European markets.

    Çelebi says AirTies’ strength lies in its ability to handle both the gateway and the traditional set-top box. This is done through software that is independent of a single chipset. “Our focus is very much innovative operators who want to differentiate. If you want a box to run Microsoft Mediaroom and all you’re doing is putting a chip on a board then we’re the wrong guy”.

    via Tying up the home network | Broadband TV News.

  • Clifford Chance builds on Turkish association with Istanbul launch

    Clifford Chance builds on Turkish association with Istanbul launch

    Clifford Chance is to launch in Turkey, 18 months after The Lawyer revealed that the magic circle firm had built a presence in the jurisdiction.

    Next year the firm will open an office in Istanbul, with London-based finance partner Simon Williams leading the Turkish practice.

    The office will operate in cooperation with Yegin Legal Consultancy (YLC), Clifford Chance’s associate Turkish law firm, which is headed by Mete Yegin.

    In 2009 Clifford Chance tied up with Yegin, who had previously worked at local firm Pekin & Pekin (27 July 2009). That said, until now Turkish work has mainly been handled out of Frankfurt.

    Managing partner David Childs said: “Since formalising our consultancy arrangement with Mete last year, our business in Turkey and the wider region has gone from strength to strength. It’s clear from discussions with our clients that they see this as one of a number of important growth markets and are keen to see us establish a presence on the ground.

    “Their view reflects our own focus on the fast growing economies in Asia, Latin America, Africa and the Middle East and our long-standing commitment to Eastern Europe.”

    Clifford Chance has been active on Turkish matters for about 30 years and recent client mandates include representing major Turkish and international clients on the financing of the Eurasia Bosphorus Tunnel, the Boyabat hydro project, the EnerjiSA power portfolio, the Mersin and Bandirma Ports, the Ankara, Antalya, Izmir and Istanbul airports and the MMK Atakas steel mill, as well as gas distribution and electricity generation and distribution privatisations and debt and capital markets issuances for a number of issuers in the US and European markets.

  • Money and Happiness

    Money and Happiness

    Measured a different way, the correlation between money and happiness is surprisingly strong

    DISMAL scientists who look at happiness often contend that, beyond a GDP per capita of just $15,000 (measured at purchasing-power parity), money does not buy happiness. Up to that point the correlation between the two is strong, but thereafter it falls away. If this is true then some heretical conclusions follow: rich America is no happier than poorer Brazil, so what is the point in people who live in rich countries working harder to get ever richer? Politicians should concentrate on maximising the mental health of their voters, rather than the size of their pay checks. But plot the data another way, on a logarithmic scale where each increment represents a 100% increase in income per head, and the relationship between wealth and happiness looks more robust.

    (by The Economist)

    Osman Kadri Koca

    Media Watch-Economist Financial Product Designer

    money and happiness
    osman kadri koca
  • Caglayan: Turkey To Invest Over 100 Bln USD In Energy In Next Decade

    Caglayan: Turkey To Invest Over 100 Bln USD In Energy In Next Decade

    251110 caglayanTurkish State Minister for foreign trade Zafer Caglayan said that Turkey would invest more than 100 billion USD in energy in the next decade.

    One of the reasons Japanese officials visited Turkey was the energy sector, added Caglayan who spoke at the 18th joint meeting of Turkish-Japanese Business Council in Istanbul on Thursday.

    Noting that Turkey attached importance to renewable energy, Caglayan said that energy diversity was also important, and added that a law on renewable energy would be adopted soon.

    Caglayan said that the law would probably be presented to Turkish parliamentary general assembly within the next 20-25 days, and then it would be adopted.

    Regarding nuclear energy, Caglayan said that Turkey had not reached an agreement with any country so far.

    AA