Turkey

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.

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.

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

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.

A holding company owned by Dubai’s Oger Telecom has come to an agreement with all of its lending banks to give control of Turk Telekom to creditors, after months of restructuring talks on a $4.75bn loan.

As the trade tension deepens between the US and its counterparts, fund investors have fled to US bonds and equities, leaving emerging market fund outflows on the rise for the most part of 2018.

Akbank is due to send out invitation letters for its late summer one year syndicated loan by the end of this week, according to a source close to the Turkish lender.

Turkish banks are later than usual on their syndicated loan refinancing timetables amid political noise in the country, and loans bankers say it will soon be too late for the banks to roll the deals over, and they might instead have to take the unusual step of repaying the debt.

Turkey was driven further into financial instability and chaos this week, reflected in tumbling asset prices and the lira being at near record lows, after the country's president Recep Erdoğan delivered a further blow to investor confidence with a cabinet reshuffle.

The outlook for Turkish IPOs is bleak after the country’s president, Recep Erdoğan, appointed a new cabinet which included his son-in-law as new finance minister.

Turkey’s Akbank will not refinance its one year loan signed last August until September, as that corresponds to when the borrower drew down on the facility, a source close to the bank said.