Even if the Turkish economy could promise investors a smooth ride – and there are certainly no guarantees in that department – Turkish politics would always have a firecracker up its sleeve. Yet the recent initial public offering (IPO) of Halkbank revealed a robust appetite for the right Turkish story at the right time, notwithstanding political turbulence. It also provided a glimpse of the concentrated co-ordination and plain hard work required to meet the tight schedules now forced on international equity issues looking for US distribution.
The Halkbank transaction brought together two prominent Turkish economic themes, each urged upon the nation by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in the wake of the 2001 financial crisis: the rehabilitation of the banking sector and privatisation. And it gave Goldman Sachs, which has been highly visible in the local banking and telecoms sectors for much of the past decade, another opportunity to polish its Turkish credentials.
