Turkey: Prime time for privatization
Interview with Ahmet Aksu, acting head of the Privatization Administration
The company was established in 2007 as a 50:50 joint venture between Sabanci Holdings, the second-biggest industrial conglomerate in Turkey, and Verbund, the largest power-generation company in Austria. The company has plans to be the biggest integrated power company in Turkey, with 5000MW of capacity and 4.3 million customers by 2015. This will give it a 10% market share.
A large part of that growth will come from participation in privatization. "We are confident that a fast development of the liberalization in the Turkish power market, including the privatization of the distribution companies and the generation assets, will make it possible for us to increase our contribution to overcome the upcoming supply bottleneck in this sector," says Selahattin Hakman, energy group president of Sabanci and chairman of Enerjisa.
The company raised innovative finance in 2008 to finance 10 hydro projects and one natural-gas-fired generation project, but it will also help the company participate in the privatization. The hybrid corporate and project finance structure was put together by a bank group of IFC, WestLB and AK Bank. This combination of multilateral, local and international finance was reflected in three tranches of financing that total €1 billion.