Middle East

We Soda, a soda ash producer fully owned by Turkish industrial conglomerate Ciner Group, has signed three seven year term loans totalling $1.66bn-equivalent in the biggest Turkish corporate loan in half a decade.

Turkish banks are gearing up for a round of loan refinancing at a time when the country is a risky economic hunting ground. But bank lenders are confident the loan market will support Turkish banks, albeit at wider margins.

Public Investment Fund, the sovereign wealth fund that invests for the government of Saudi Arabia, is seeking global bank lenders for a debut loan. Banks, short of new deals in the region and eager to get closer to a country growing more reliant on capital markets, have been quick to show their interest. Silas Brown reports.

The US has imposed sanctions on two senior officials in the Turkish government, prompting debt and equity markets to sell off and driving Turkish lira to over five to the dollar for the first time in history.

Public Investment Fund, the sovereign wealth fund that invests for the government of Saudi Arabia, is seeking global bank lenders for a debut loan.

Turkey’s Akbank is seeking to refinance a pair of $337m and €515m one year loans signed last August.

Kuwait Foreign Petroleum Exploration Co (Kufpec) has mandated banks for a five year loan of around $1bn, according to two sources.

HSBC has appointed Gareth Thomas as head of global banking for the Middle East, North Africa and Turkey. He starts in the new job in September.

Aluminium Bahrain (Alba) is working to get the final part of its second export credit agency-backed loan by the end of this quarter. The deal will wrap up the multibillion dollar-equivalent financing for one of the largest brownfield projects in the Middle East.

Maaden Bauxite and Alumina Co has amended and refinanced $2.1bn-equivalent of long term debt. The subsidiary of Saudi Arabian Mining Co has locked in better terms on its debt than the loans being replaced.

Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank has returned to the Asian loan market after two years absence, plotting a $400m deal that has already been partly taken up by lead bank Mizuho.

There is a sense that banks in the Middle East are being encouraged to pledge allegiance in the public bond markets to either Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates or to Qatar, as the diplomatic tensions between the two sides rumble on. But in the MTN market it is becoming clear that no such division exists.