Turkey’s Treasury hires banks for lease certificate issue

ANKARA

The Treasury and Finance Ministry said on Feb. 12 it has mandated Citigroup, Kuwait Finance House and Standard Chartered for a U.S. dollar denominated lease certificate issuance on the international capital markets.

The ministry did not provide other details on the planned issuance.

The Treasury issues lease certificates in order to diversify the borrowing instruments and broaden the investor base.

Last month, the Treasury raised 1.25 billion euros from bonds due March 2025.

International investors’ demand for the bond issue was more than triple its actual size.

The bond has a coupon rate of 4.625 percent, and its yield rate for investors is 4.75 percent.

With this transaction, the amount of funds that has been raised from international capital markets in 2019 has reached a total of $3.4 billion.

Bloomberg reported on Feb. 6 that Turkey’s sovereign wealth fund (Varlık Fonu) hired Citigroup Inc. and Industrial Commercial Bank of China Ltd. to coordinate a 1 billion-euro ($1.14 billion) syndicated loan.

The facility will have a two-year maturity with an option to extend for another year so that Varlık Fonu can inject cash into the companies it holds, people with knowledge of the matter told the news service.