Turkey’s Akbank Offers Higher Rate to Refinance Maturing Loans
February 08, 2012, 5:04 PM ESTBy Louise Meeson and Ercan Ersoy
Feb. 8 (Bloomberg) -- Akbank TAS, a Turkish bank part-owned by Citigroup Inc., is offering lenders higher interest and fees to refinance $1.3 billion of debt maturing in March.
Akbank may pay an all-in margin of 145 basis points more than benchmark rates on the new one-year loan coordinated by Bank of America Corp., according to a person with knowledge of the transaction who declined to be identified because the terms are private. That compares with an all-in margin of 110 basis points on the Istanbul-based bank’s one-year facility being replaced, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
Akbank is Turkey’s second-largest listed bank by market value. Citigroup bought a 20 percent stake in Akbank in 2007 for about $3.1 billion.
A spokesman for Akbank in Istanbul who declined to be identified wouldn’t comment.
--Editors: Andrew Reierson, Michael Shanahan
To contact the reporters on this story: Louise Meeson in London on lmeeson@bloomberg.net; Ercan Ersoy in Istanbul at eersoy@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Faris Khan at Fkhan33@bloomberg.net.
