Tag: Atasehir

  • Turkey Renews Push for Arab Investment

    Turkey Renews Push for Arab Investment

    By Emre Peker

    It’s a curious thing that Turkey’s growing diplomatic ties with the Arab world over the past decade haven’t yielded a glut of big-ticket investments from Middle Eastern economies.

    Now Ankara, hungry for cash to feed its capital-deficient economy after a sharp economic slowdown, is renewing its bid for investment from the region’s energy-rich nations flush with cash from high oil prices.

    In Istanbul this month, Turkey’s cabinet ministers lined up at the Turkey Arab forum to court Middle Eastern capital, laying out the case that Turkish companies offer better investment prospects than the red-hot economies in Asia and Latin America.

    “Our economies complement each other, and it’s very important to create sources of interdependency among our economies. If interdependency is created through trade, this will help stability and security,” Turkey’s Deputy Prime Minister Ali Babacan told more than 400 officials, investors, and representatives from real estate companies, energy firms and banks, among other attendees.

    Bloomberg News
    Istanbul’s fast-expanding Financial Center is seeking a new wave of Middle Eastern capital.

    Despite accounting for only $8.3 billion, or 3.2%, of all investments abroad from the Middle East and North Africa, Turkey offers broad scope for growth for Arab Investors, Finance Minister Mehmet Simsek added.

    Recent months suggest the tide may slowly be starting to turn.

    The Commercial Bank of Qatar bought a 71% stake in Turkish lender Alternatifbank in March. Known as A-Bank, the Istanbul-based lender had a book value of about $325 million at the end of last year and CBQ said it paid twice the as much as the firms valuation in the middle of 2012.

    Other investments that have trickled into Turkey last year include Saudi Arabian private equity firm Eastgate Capital Group’s debut investment in the country with the purchase of a 49.8% stake in Fabeks Dis Ticaret AS, the textile firm produicing high-end retail apparel under the Silk & Cashmere brand. Bahrain’s Investcorp was another buyer in the apparel sector, acquiring a 30% stake at menswear retailer Orka Group to tap into a market estimated to be worth $7.4 billion. And Kuwait’s NBK Capital bought a 50% stake in Bavet, the Istanbul-based distributor of animal pharmaceuticals.

    Abdullah AlFouzan, chairman of The Investor For Securities Company, the Saudi firm with more than $1 billion of assets under management, said his Riyadh-based company is planning to launch a $250 million real-estate fund within three months to buy properties in Turkey’s Black Sea province and Bursa, the industrial and agricultural hub south of Istanbul. He added that ISC is also seeking to deploy part of a $400 million fund to invest in Turkish charity endowments, which are known as waqf and enjoy tax breaks.

    “We are under pressure from our clients to hunt for opportunities to invest somewhere else. We are traveling to invest across the region. We believe Turkey is an attractive investment for the next five years,” said Abdullah AlFouzan, chairman of The Investor For Securities Company, the Saudi firm with more than $1 billion of assets under management.

    Yet recent buyouts pale in comparison with the government’s $6.55 billion sale of a 55% stake in Turk Telekom in 2005 to Saudi Oger Group. In the years since Ankara’s biggest state-asset sale, Turkey hasn’t clocked in another landmark deal of the same magnitude from the Middle East even though the money has continued to trickle in over the years.

    For Mehmet Habbab, chairman for the past decade of the Turkish-Middle Eastern business council at the Foreign Economic Relations Board in Istanbul, stronger government support for greater trade links remains the key to help Ankara draw more middle eastern capital.

    “We are at the beginning of the road to better relations. When I used to talk with Turks, they would say, ‘We don’t trust the Arabs, they joined forces with the British and stabbed us in the back.’ And when I asked Arabs why they’re not doing business in Turkey, they would say, ‘Turks governed us for centuries, and then we wanted to be independent. Now that we want to trade, Turks turn their back to us.’”

  • Istanbul Wall Street

    Istanbul Wall Street

    If you go anywhere in Europe, the one country everyone says to watch out for is Turkey. And the country’s largest city, Istanbul, is one of the hottest cities in the world.

    the-iifc-is-being-built-on-a-170-acre-site

    The country is incredibly ambitious.

    It wants to make its economy one of the 10 largest by 2023. To achieve that goal, it’s going to build a brand new financial center.

    Architecture firm HOK has just unveiled the master plan it developed for the Istanbul International Financial Center (IIFC).

    The renderings for the $2.6 billion project are beautiful.  The project is

    via Istanbul Wall Street – Business Insider.

  • Turkey Plans ‘Wall Street of Istanbul’

    Turkey Plans ‘Wall Street of Istanbul’

    Country to invest $2.6 billion to once more become ‘global center of commerce’

    By Marlene Y. Satter, AdvisorOne

    September 18, 2012 • Reprints

    It may not look like much now. But after $2.6 billion is plowed into a bare plot of ground in Atasehir over the next three years, the Istanbul suburb will be transformed into a sparkling ménage of high-rise buildings, a symbol of Turkey’s resumption of a position of power on the global commercial stage.

    Bloomberg reported Tuesday that the plan, advanced by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is an effort to create a one-square-mile “Wall Street of Istanbul” that will be known as IFC-Istanbul—the International Financial Center. Erdogan, whose Justice and Development Party was reelected last year, sees Turkey as a growing center of economic and political power that will make its presence known in the Middle East and southeastern Europe.

    Environment and Urbanization Minister Erdogan Bayraktar said in the report that once IFC-Istanbul is functioning, “Istanbul will assume its historical role as a global center of commerce.” The country’s financial industry has already seen substantial growth even as its economy as a whole expanded by 8.5% in 2011.

    This year alone, Mizuho Financial Group Inc. and Mitsubishi Corp. of Japan, Kuwait’s Burgan Bank SAK and OAO Sberbank of Russia all came to the city, either buying Turkish firms or opening their own offices.

    They have plenty of company; such institutions as Citigroup and HSBC Holdings already have a presence in Istanbul, although currently the financial heart of the city is located in the Levent and Maslak districts.

    Not to be outdone, the Istanbul Stock Exchange has also grown, expanding 26% this year and more than doubling in size since 2009. While still very small compared with New York and London, it is a respectable size, larger by just a bit than Frankfurt’s at $51 billion and almost four times the size of Dubai’s.

    While everything in Istanbul isn’t perfect—some development projects have stalled—foreign investment is soaring, with direct investment 25% higher in the first two months of 2012 than it was a year ago. CEOs and senior executives seek out the Billionaire Club for nightclub entertainment and new hotels, villas and apartments are going up all over the city—with restaurants and other amenities following to satisfy demand.

    “I had no idea how big Istanbul was until I was appointed here,” said Martin Spurling in the report. Spurling, chief executive of HSBC Bank in Turkey, added, “I was shocked. In terms of its location, history, culture, human potential and hospitality, Istanbul’s a great candidate to be an international finance center. We have to explain it to the world a little better.”

    via Turkey Plans ‘Wall Street of Istanbul’.