Chinese billionaires visit Turkey for opportunities

GÖKHAN KURTARAN ISTANBUL- Hürriyet Daily News

An employee looks up while working a electronics plant in China’s Suzhou in this photo. Some Chinese businesses seek investing in electronics sectors in Turkey.

Members of Kingdom Club, a Chinese business group of billonaires pose during a meeting in Istanbul with Turkish businessmen. Turkey is promising, the bosses say.

An elite group from China’s “Kingdom Club,” the business body formed by the wealthy businessmen whose firms’ rank among the Top 500 Chinese enterprises, visited Istanbul on Wednesday to analyze business opportunities in Turkey.

Agriculture, information technologies, electronics, energy and finance sectors are main fields of focus for the Asian billionaires, who met with Turkish businessmen at an exclusive meeting at the Çirağan Palace on the Bosphorus.

“The intention of the members of the club in visiting Istanbul is to observe business opportunities in Turkey,” said Shi Yuzhu, a shareholder in China Minsheng Bank and Huaxia Bank.

Shi said he was considering investing in the online gaming sector in Turkey, speaking to the Hürriyet Daily News on the sidelines of the New Step to Silk Road meeting.

Having ranked 616th in the world’s billionaires list of Forbes in 2010, Shi also serves as vice president of Giant Interactive, the online game company.

“We are newly meeting with business opportunities in Turkey,” said Fu Jun, vice president of All China Industry of Commerce, and owner of Macrolink Group, the mining, chemical industry and real estate company.

“I am considering hotel and tourism investments on the southern and western coasts of Turkey,” he said. Considering Turkey’s strong economic growth in recent years, the country would attract more Chinese investors in near future, Fu said.

Turkey and China have been planning to mutually launch banks in each country in a bid to operate in both yuan and lira and boost bilateral trade. However, Turkey’s Banking Regulation and Supervision Agency, or BRSA, which is tepid to new banks in the country, set as a condition capital of at least $300 million for the foundation of a Chinese bank branch, Turkish media reported earlier. The reports said Turkish officials and the Bank of China stopped negotiations due to the BRSA condition.

Speaking to the Daily News, Lianli Zhang, chief representative of the Bank of China office based in Istanbul, denied claims. “The negations continue between the Bank of China and BRSA officials currently.” The Bank of China can well consider that amount for opening up a branch in Turkey, Lianli said.

Istanbul awaits China bank

Talking about the Bank of China’s appetite to take a place in the Turkish banking sector, “It would be so important to have the sixth biggest bank in the world in Istanbul,” Hüsnü Özyeğin, chairperson for the Turkish-Chinese Business Council at the Foreign Economic Relations Board of Turkey, or DEİK, told the Daily News.

Özyeğin’s Fiba Bank already has a representation office in China.

Trade volume between the two countries has grown from $2 billion in 2002 to approximately $17 billion in 2010.

Chen Feng, chairman of the Hainan Airlines Group, which broken into the Turkish market by acquiring 49 percent of Turkey’s ACT Airlines for $25 million in July, said, “Chinese businessmen were about to visit Africa and I told them skip it and come to Turkey to observe the potential here.