Turkey

Dogus, one of Turkey’s biggest companies, has neither denied nor confirmed widespread reports that it is restructuring its debt, the Financial Times reported. But economists and analysts fear the company could be a canary in the coal mine for Turkey’s corporate debt problems. For years, economic growth has been fuelled by cheap international credit. Corporates took out large loans in dollars or euros. But with the currency sliding, the cost of servicing that debt is rocketing.

Investors are bracing for trouble at Turkey’s banks as some of the nation’s biggest conglomerates struggle to repay their debts, Bloomberg News reported. The Borsa Istanbul Banks Index, which comprises 13 lenders, underperformed the Borsa Istanbul 100 by 20 percent over the past year. Valuations dropped to a nine-year low in November, and have remained there. The banks index trades at 4.9 times estimated earnings, compared with 7.6 times for the broader market.

The consortium formed to build and operate the world’s biggest airport in Istanbul was facing enough challenges even before the government minister in charge of the project started talking about insolvency, Bloomberg News reported. In a television interview late Monday, Transport Minister Ahmet Arslan confirmed the government was considering giving the consortium an unspecified amount of time before requiring it to start paying rent, which has been set at more than $1 billion annually over 25 years. But then he went a step further.

Murat Ulker, Turkey’s richest man and owner of Godiva chocolates and McVitie’s biscuits, said he met with five bank bosses to renegotiate as much as $7 billion of debt for his company Yildiz Holding AS, Bloomberg News reported. “We spoke about many details,” Ulker said, adding that he was “moved” and “pleased” at the support he received from the bank bosses. The meeting was held on Tuesday evening in Istanbul. Ulker and the bank chiefs discussed how they were committed to resolving the debt issue, but didn’t go into details of any restructuring or new facility, according to the Yildiz boss.

Yildiz Holding AS, the global sweets company owned by Turkey’s richest man, said it’s in talks with banks to consolidate loans in its home country and to refinance the debt to keep the company’s growth path intact, Bloomberg News reported. Yildiz Holding met with lenders following preliminary 2017 earnings and 2018 projections, it said in an emailed statement after Bloomberg reported it was seeking to restructure debt with 10 banks.

Baghdad’s talks with Turkey about ramping up oil exports from northern Iraq, including the semi-autonomous Kurdish region, is complicated by a $4 billion debt that the Kurds owe to Turkey, according to Iraq’s oil minister, Bloomberg News reported. Iraq is seeking an agreement with Turkey for all exports from the north, including the Kurdish region and the disputed province of Kirkuk, through a pipeline currently operated by the Kurds, Jabbar al-Luaibi told reporters in Baghdad. Iraq’s state-run Oil Marketing Co., known as SOMO, would control all exports under the agreement, he said.

Turkey’s markets took a hammering amid a deepening standoff between President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government and the U.S. The lira, stocks and bonds tumbled, while the cost of insuring Turkish credit against a default rose after the two NATO members suspended visa services for each other’s citizens, Bloomberg News reported. The selloff underlined Turkey’s vulnerability as the prospect of U.S.

Banks that provided a $4.75 billion loan to the owner of Turk Telekomunikasyon AS see a government takeover of the operator’s management as the best way of resolving Turkey’s largest debt default, according to three people familiar with the matter. The stock rose. Lenders favor this outcome to another proposal of a cash injection into Otas, which owns 55 percent of Turk Telekom and has missed two payments on the loan it took out in 2013, the people said, asking not to be identified because negotiations are ongoing, Bloomberg News reported.

Banks that provided a $4.75 billion loan to Turk Telekomunikasyon AS’s major shareholder hired Lazard Ltd. to advise them on the nation’s biggest ever default, according to three people with knowledge of the matter. The creditors also hired Raiffeisen Investment AG to advise in negotiations over the loan taken out by Ojer Telekomunikasyon AS, or Otas, which owns 55 percent of Turk Telekom, Bloomberg News reported. Other parties to the talks are the Turkish Treasury, which also has a stake in the company, and Saudi Telecom Co., which indirectly owns shares, the people said.

The Turkish lira corporate bond market is in the doldrums and the nation’s largest independent fund manager says the government needs to step in to get it going again. A string of defaults and restructurings has dampened investor appetite for the 18 billion lira ($5.2 billion) market in corporate debt, issuance has slowed, and a borrowing binge by the Treasury has increased competition for a limited savings pool, Bloomberg News reported.