With its tall ancient trees and exquisite lawns studded with marble antiques, the Nakkastepe headquarters of Koc Holdings look like an Ottoman aristocratic home from which the lord of the manor is absent on a prolonged journey. Situated on a tall hill on the Asian side of Istanbul, far from the madding crowds of Europe's noisiest city, the walled compound exudes an old-world peace.
But Koc's abrupt cancellation of its $250 million global equity offering suggests that all is not as serene as it looks in the Koc empire. A short announcement by the company said that "although demand was heavy, the international share offer was pulled because the offered price was not found satisfactory owing to significant volatility in emerging markets". The announcement gave no indication that the sale would go ahead when the conditions improved.
The deal would have given foreign investors a chance to buy into Turkey's largest privately held company and would have been the biggest offering of equity in a private Turkish company to date. It was trailed by a high-profile advertising campaign in the international press which proclaimed Koc "a part of Turkish life" and posed the question: "How can you profit?"
The issue, led by Goldman Sachs, was to have consisted of 1.4