Tag: KOC

  • Koç University Seeks Entrepreneurs

    Koç University Seeks Entrepreneurs

    The Global Social Venture Competition (GSVC) has begun, and for the 3rd year, Koç University will host an Executive Summary round of the competition as an Outreach Partner within the GSVC global network. The competition provides an opportunity for graduate students from Turkey, the Caucasus, MENA to realize their impact-driven business ideas that target local and global societal challenges. Grand Prize and other winners at the Global Finals held in April 2014 at UC Berkeley team will be awarded up to 50.000 USD.

    On October 22nd, the Info Session series for Global Social Venture Competition (GSVC) began. GSVC aims to transform creative ideas into impact-driven businesses, which combine financial sustainability with positive societal impact at their core.

    GSVC seeks to reward projects that are both financially and socially sustainable, and have the highest levels of social impact potential. The competition is open to graduate students only. The team has to have at least one graduate student to apply. The competition encourages the social entrepreneurs to build a business plan with sustainable solutions to issues common to cities, society, environment or humanity.

    During the period that cover the Info Sessions and Executive Summary workshops, consulting services will be available from the GSVC team at Koç University; there will also be matchmaking events for team members to find each other and discuss their social venture ideas. The GSVC team at Koç University will select an experienced, diverse jury to select a shortlist of teams, and from that two will advance to the Regional Finals. Following the review of applications, mentors will be assigned to those teams selected to advance to the Regional Finals held in March 2014 in London.

    The submission deadline for Executive Summaries is: January 17, 2014. Detailed and up-to-date information regarding application guidelines, info sessions, special guests and the competition schedule you can visit or facebook page:

    The Three Stages of the Competition

    GSVC is composed of three stages. The first stage involves the preparation/submission of executive summaries by entrepreneurs. The second stage is the regional finals hosted in London, and the top projects participated the regional finals will compete at global finals in Berkeley. Social venture teams are expected to present the social, financial, and environmental impacts of their projects at all stages.

    For submission condition & eligibility please visit: http://gsvc.ku.edu.tr/application

    James Halliday, International Coordinator for Strategic Advancement, gsvc@ku.edu.tr, Phone: +90-2123381812

    SOURCE Koc University

    via Koç University Seeks Entrepreneurs — ISTANBUL, October 28, 2013 /PRNewswire/ –.

  • Is Erdogan punishing a Turkish business empire for helping protesters?

    Is Erdogan punishing a Turkish business empire for helping protesters?

    Turkey’s Koc Holding has been investigated repeatedly since helping antigovernment protesters this summer. Will that chill investment?

    By Alexander Christie-Miller, Correspondent / October 8, 2013

    • 1008-turkey-Erdogan-Koc-holding_full_380

    Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan speaks during a meeting in Ankara, Turkey, Oct. 1, 2013.

    AP

    • In Pictures Turkey’s discontent

    A string of legal and administrative actions against Turkey’s largest business empire has led some to suspect a government vendetta, risking damage to the country’s investment-friendly reputation.

    • In Pictures Turkey’s discontent
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    Koc Holding, whose companies account for some 9 percent of Turkey’s GDP, incurred the wrath of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan when a Koc-owned hotel sheltered protesters fleeing from police during mass protests in Istanbul in June.

    Since then tax authorities have launched probes into two Koc companies, the government has cancelled a contract with one of its firms to build warships, and a university founded by Koc has been threatened with eviction over disputed back rent. Last month a lawyer filed a criminal complaint calling for an investigation into the company’s possible role in the overthrow of Turkey’s first Islamist government in 1997.

    While both Koc and Ankara deny any of these measures are politically motivated, analysts say the claims are tarnishing Turkey’s business image at a time when the country badly needs more direct foreign investment.

    Since the start of May, the value of the Turkish lira has plunged 11 percent against the dollar, and the Istanbul stock market has lost 14 percent of its value as investors moved their money out of emerging markets like Turkey. 

    The currency slump has prompted fears over Turkey’s reliance on short term foreign debt. With economists warning that the country needs to attract longer term foreign investment in order to secure itself against the threat posed by further currency devaluations, many are worried about the government’s possible targeting of Koc.

    “It seems like revenge, and I believe it’s damaging the image of Turkey’s business environment,” says Ugur Gurses, an economic columnist for the daily Radikal newspaper.

    RECOMMENDED: Think you know Turkey? Take our country quiz.

    Others remain unconvinced that there is any vendetta. “It is a huge company with many different operations, so hard to say whether it is being disproportionately impacted by regulatory oversight,” says Timothy Ash, head of emerging market research at Standard Bank in London.

    Whether or not Ankara’s hand is truly behind the measures against Koc, the perception is that it might be is adding to unease in the business community. 

    “What we need is direct investment, not loans, and if the government is taking revenge against Koc, this sends out a bad message for our future,” says Gurses.

    He believes the alleged targeting of Koc may fade away if more business-oriented minds in Ankara are able to appease Erdogan’s anger against the group.

    Chain of events

    The controversy surrounding Koc began when the Divan Hotel, close to Istanbul’s Gezi Park, opened its doors to anti-government demonstrators fleeing tear gas and riot police on the night of June 15.

    As scores of demonstrators sheltered in the lobby, including a German member of the European Parliament, riot police fired tear gas and a water cannon through its revolving doors. Although the hotel’s management made the decision to shelter the protesters, Koc Holding, which owns the hotel, has supported the decision.

    The following day Mr. Erdogan, who has consistently portrayed the demonstrators as violent and criminal, issued the first of a series of veiled threats against Koc.

    “We know which hotel owners helped terrorists. Those crimes will not remain unpunished,” he said at a rally of his supporters in Istanbul.

    The following month Turkey’s finance ministry launched an investigation into TUPRAS, the largest Koc-owned company and Turkey’s sole oil refiner, and another Koc company, Aygaz, which sells liquefied petroleum gas.

    Soon after news broke of the investigations, Turkey’s Finance Minister Mehmet Simsek denied they were politically motivated.

    “The Tax Inspection Board conducts 50,000 tax investigations every year. There is definitely no connection between the Gezi incidents and tax investigations,” he wrote in a message on Twitter.

    Late last month a $2.5 billion contract to build six corvettes for the Turkish Navy given to another Koc subsidiary, RMK Marine, was unexpectedly canceled after it was awarded in January. The cancellation came after a rival firm that had been excluded from the bidding process filed a complaint with a business standards council within the prime minister’s office claiming the tender had been unfair.

    Meanwhile, Turkish media also reported last month that the Ministry of Forestry is preparing to evict a university run by Koc from land the ministry claims to own for failing to pay disputed back rent of about 20 to 30 million Turkish lira ($10 million to $15 million).

    The measures evoked comparisons with another incident of alleged government bullying of big business: a $3.8 billion tax fine levied against the Dogan group in 2009. The fine came after newspapers belonging to Dogan, which owns the country’s largest media empire, took an aggressively negative line against Erdogan’s Islamist-rooted government, and the prime minister publicly rebuked owner Aydin Dogan.

    A clash of power players

    In an interview on Turkish television last month Koc Holding chairman Mustafa Koc, at once dismissed claims that his company was being targeted, but simultaneously defended his hotel’s ‘humanitarian approach’ during the protests.

    “Any change [in our investments] or cancellation [in our contracts], to date, is the subject of mere speculation. We want nothing to do with this,” he said.

    Koc Holding, founded by Mustafa’s grandfather Vehbi Koc in 1926, is among a clutch of family-owned business empires that make up Turkey’s secular aristocracy.

    While they retain much of their former economic clout, the political influence they once enjoyed has reduced dramatically over the past decade in which Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party has governed Turkey.

    The newly affluent pious class that has flourished under Erdogan views this old elite with bitter resentment, referring to them by the derogatory term “White Turks” and accusing them of complicity in past state repression of devout Muslims.

    On Sept. 16, a lawyer in the conservative city of Erzurum filed a complaint against Koc Holding and Dogan, calling for both to be added as suspects to a criminal case into the fall of Turkey’s first Islamist government in 1997. The trial involved more than 100 military officers accused of using covert pressure to engineer the overthrow of Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan, an episode now referred to by most Turks as the “postmodern coup.”

    The complaint was filed the day after Erdogan made a speech in which he seemed to call for the prosecution of business and media groups he said were involved.

    “Wasn’t there a contribution of conglomerates to [the 1997 coup]? Wasn’t there a contribution of print and visual media? I’m astonished that they aren’t on trial. I wonder why they aren’t called to account,” he said in a speech to industrialists in Istanbul.

    Mustafa Polat, the lawyer who filed the complaint, told The Christian Science Monitor he had heard Erdogan’s speech before acting, but was not influenced by it.

    “Koc and Dogan cooperated with the coup party and they took financial advantage of the situation,” Mr. Polat says, adding that the companies are now being investigated by Turkey’s financial crimes bureau.

    Polat is a complainant in the case because he graduated from a religious high school, and following the coup, legal changes barred graduates from these schools from training as lawyers, forcing him to study in northern Cyprus.

    “If it wasn’t for the coup, I wouldn’t have had to go there,” he says.

    He added that at this stage it is not clear what penalty – if any – the companies could face. But he believes Koc deserves punishment regardless of the economic cost, using a Turkish saying: “The finger feels no pain that is cut off according to Sharia law.”

  • Turkish investor KOC sponsors UKTI’s British business showcase

    Turkish investor KOC sponsors UKTI’s British business showcase

    Koc olympics

    The largest Turkish investor in the UK, Beko PLC, has announced it will sponsor the terrace pavilion at UKTI’s British Business Embassy at Lancaster House.

    The British Business Embassy is expected to generate £1bn in benefits to the UK economy by showcasing the best of UK innovation to top UK and international business, and government leaders.

    Sponsorship of the pavilion will take place across the duration of the Olympic and Paralympic games, as the Global Investment Conference on July 26 will kick off the showcasing.

    Following the conference a series of 17 high-growth sector and country days with thousands of prominent UK and international businesses registered to attend.

    Levent Çakıroğlu, President of Koç Holding Consumer Durables Group and CEO of Beko PLC’s parent company Arçelik A.Ş., will be attending the Global Investment Conference, joining 200 global financial and business leaders, Government ministers, investors and policy makers.

    Ragip Balcioğlu, Managing Director of Beko PLC, announcing the sponsorship said: “As a UK-based company, Beko is proud to be supporting the Government’s Olympic trade and investment initiative. This activity is part of the company’s commitment to work closely with the British Government to increase trade and investment ties between the UK and Turkey.

    “This sponsorship comes at a time when the Beko brand in the UK continues to go from strength to strength. We feel very honoured that Beko has been accepted by British consumers and become one of the leading white goods brands as a result.

    “We are now the market leaders in washing machine, refrigeration and freestanding cooker categories and we take great pride in the UK awards we have received for innovation, quality and distribution.”

     

    B Daily Business Network