IC Holding acquires Thrace electricity grid

ANKARA - Anatolia News Agency

Finance Minister Mehmet Şimşek (C) and and IC Holding chair İbrahim Çeçen shake hands during a ceremony in Ankara. AA photo

Turkey’s privatization board signed an acquisition deal yesterday with IC Holding to privatize Trakya Elektrik Dağıtım (TREDAŞ), a state electricity distributor operating in the northwestern Thrace region of Turkey.

IC Holding, a company active in basic sectors including energy, infrastructure and tourism, will pay 20 percent of $575 million in advance and will pay the rest in four installments.
The company entered the energy sector in 1998, said IC Holding Chairman İbrahim Çeçen at the signing ceremony, adding that they target both production and distribution of electricity.

Over 800,000 subscribers

The Thrace region, which covers northwestern provinces of Edirne, Kırklareli and Tekirdağ, is rich in industrial enterprises with a total of 822,023 subscribers. Net electricity consumption in the region last year was about 5 billion kilowatt hours.

In final negotiations IC İçtaş, IC Holding’s construction and infrastructure arm, proposed the second highest bid with $575 million and won the auction for TREDAŞ, which has a 4 percent share in the national electricity distribution sector. Aksa, the Istanbul-based energy company, made the highest offer for the grid with $622 million but later pulled out, opening the way for IC İçtaş.

Garanti, Vakıfbank and İşbank provided a $700 million loan for IC İçtaş.